User-generated documentation is a big issue in technical communication circles. Aaron and I have discussed this topic on and off over the last couple of years, but really haven’t come to a definitive conclusion on the merits of user-generated documentation.

However, this post at Craig Haiss’ Helpscribe blog got me thinking once again about taking advantage of the knowledge of users. If properly done, tapping into the knowledge of users can improve the quality and breadth of your documentation.

Why do we need user-generated documentation anyway?

Your customers are often the best source of information about the product that you’re documenting. They’re using it every day, and they’ve undoubtedly come up with some interesting tricks, hacks, and workarounds that can benefit the wider user community.

Your customers are using the product in ways that you’ve probably never considered while sitting in your isolated development silo. That’s not to knock my fellow technical communicators. But let’s be honest: no matter how creative you are, you can’t possibly come up with all the ways in which customers use a product.

Getting the words in

Tapping into the user experience can be difficult. One company that I worked for in the late 1990s had a dedicated email address for documentation issues. In the two years or so in which I worked there, I think we only got two or three emails from users.

As Craig Haiss discussed in his blog post, a great way to take advantage of the experience of your users is with a forum. A number of companies have very active forums; some good examples are:

• MySQL
• Splunk
• uptime software
• Canonical

The MySQL forum is monitored (and I believe moderated) by the documentation team. I can’t be 100% sure, but I think that the same goes for Splunk.

The challenges

The first problem is how to get customers to share their experiences. Not all of your users, even the more savvy among them, will know about or be willing to use a forum or a wiki or whatever you plan to implement. You need to get the word out. Having a link on a Web page isn’t enough; people may or may not click it. Promotion is the key. First, make users aware of the forum or wiki. Put links in the PDF/printed documentation and online help. If possible, have someone evangelize wiki and forum use with customers.

Next, what information should you use? An active forum contains a lot of useful information. But it also contains information that really doesn’t belong anywhere else but in the forum. You’ll need to work with whoever’s moderating the forum to help you pick and choose the content to use in your documentation. That said, you have to decide where to put the user-generated content. Much of it might not fit into the documentation set. So where can it go?

When I worked with uptime software, any information that I couldn’t incorporate into the user documentation went into knowledge base articles. Another option is to convert that content into a series of technical notes or tech tips that users can download from a Web site.

You’ll also need to devote resources to monitor forums or wikis. But remember you’re not there to lurk and leech. One of the keys to building a vibrant online community, one that people will want to use, is to interact with users. Give them feedback, probe for more information, show them that people in your organization are interested in what they have to say and how they use a product.

Of course, licensing of the content can be an issue. You’re essentially using the work of others and while it’s not plagiarism I’m sure that there are some copyright/fair use issues surrounding this. Probably one of the easiest ways of covering yourself and your employer is to clearly state the terms of posting up front — “company X reserves the right to re-use the information that you post …” Splunk handles this in an interesting way: all of its community content is licensed under Creative Commons.

Remember, though, that I’m not a lawyer. You’ll definitely want to look at the legal ramifications of using the work of others before proceeding.

Conclusion

Users a literally a gold mine of information about using a product or a service. They’re in the trenches, adapting whatever your organization develops to their own work flows and work patterns. The information that users possess can be an excellent supplement to your documentation and training efforts. By working with those users, you have the potential to make your materials more relevant and to create an almost emotional connection with users.

I’m sensing a presentation coming out of this …

Related posts:

1. User generated documentation: embrace it or shun it?
2. Ramblings about lightweight markup languages, user-generated docs, and pulling it all together
3. Fostering user and author collaboration