Over Here & Over There: Fragmented Documentation

Sometimes technical writers find themselves in an environment where some documentation is on the company website and some is in the product's online help. There's even more content in a knowledge base that the help desk uses--and contributes to. Oh, and there's a wealth of information scattered around the engineering team's Confluence space.

Even when everyone tries to keep things organized, it's very common for multiple documentation channels to pop up. This is often a source of confusion and stress, for technical writers and users alike. Let's talk about our battles with hydra-like situations and help each other find ways reduce the friction of working with fragmented documentation environments.

• Have you ever worked with multiple-channel docs? What channels were there? Were you responsible for content across all of the delivery methods or only some of them?
• How do docs end up fragmented? Is it just audience needs? writers' needs? a long history of changing tools or platforms?
• What special challenges do you face when writing new content--and maintaining past content?
• How do fragmented docs affect your users?
• To consolidate or not to consolidate: What are the advantages of keeping separate channels? of consolidating them? How does this decision get made?
• Supposing your company decides to consolidate. What does that look like? for the organization as a whole? for users? for technical writers?

We follow the Write the Docs Code of Conduct.

We'll use Zoom for this meetup. Register to receive the Zoom link here in the event description. Then, when you log in to Zoom for the event, be sure that your Zoom name matches the name you used in your registration.

Want to get notifications about our events? You’ll find instructions in the “About” section of the New England and Florida meetup home pages.