--- title: Help us build better doc description: We want you to join our Ubuntu circle, and help us document MAAS. More minds, more eyes, more hands make better doc. […] url: https://canonical.com/blog/help-us-build-better-doc?format=md --- 1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog) 2. Article --- [Bill Wear](https://canonical.com/blog/author/billwear "More about Bill Wear") 17 March 2023 # Help us build better doc [cloud](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/cloud) [documentation](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/documentation) [MAAS](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/maas) [Server](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/server) --- Share the article Suppose you have a new feature for your software. Features can come from many sources, internal and external to your organization. Internally, they may originate with marketing, sales, support, developers, executives, or even known issues or prior experience. Externally, they can come from users, customers, and even competitors. In fact, competitors are often the catalyst for revolutionary features. Features can come from anywhere, even from little things you see while you’re biking in the afternoon, or watching the barista in the coffee shop. These many features get collected into roadmaps, which make their way into development plans and specifications, which get assigned to the many developers that make a product successful. While there are many developers, though, there are few technical authors to translate all this glory into immortal prose — or at least into a decent how-to guide. In fact, large teams of 20 or 30 developers often depend on just one writer to produce all of their documentation. This seems like an unbalanced workload: many features, many developers, one technical author — and yet, it’s a very common practice. ### How can this possibly work? Well, a lot of teams have *tried* to make this work with a few gimmicks: * They try to make the writer better, with training, and bootcamps, and certifications, and lots of special tools and procedures. * They try to make the text simpler by organizing it better, and being sure never to repeat messages (e.g., use links instead). * They try to improve productivity with automation, removing everything from the writer’s focus except writing and editing. * Eventually, they usually try incentives, like a bigger salary, a bigger title, or maybe just a bigger refrigerator. These all help — especially the refrigerator, if you love diet soda like I do — but they aren’t sufficient to get the level of productivity needed to produce great documentation. So what else can we do? ### Hello, crowdsourcing “Yeah,” you say, in a sort of sarcastic tone, “crowdsourcing. Don’t expect much when you’re crowdsourcing documentation!” Then you share with me your litany of normal expectation: * Bad quality * Unpredictable delivery * Awful narratives * Developer angst when they have to try to throw doc together, at the last minute, while they’re trying to get the release out the door. Well, let’s be bold. Let’s suppose that “don’t expect much” is *almost* the right mantra for this plan. What if we modify that to, “don’t expect *too* much”? * Suppose I can accept sentence fragments, like a virtual mind-map of nouns, adjectives, and verbs? * Suppose I tell my contributors not to worry too much about good grammar, or spelling? (That’s my job). * Suppose I tell my contributors that narrative cohesion shouldn’t even be on their radar? (That’s my job, too). You’d probably say, “Uh, sounds nice, but will it even *work* in practice?” I think so. [Check out this video](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jfFYvApgzTpF98T_6zwI1IKtLM7ZjsJ8/view?usp=sharing) to find out how. [Get in touch Interested in running Ubuntu in your organization?](https://ubuntu.com/about/contact-us/form) ## Sign up for our newsletter Get the latest Canonical news and updates in your inbox. Work email: \*I agree to receive information about Canonical's products and services. By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical's Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/dataprivacy). Sign up ## Share on --- ## Related posts [### MAAS installation: bare metal provisioning is easier than ever](https://canonical.com/blog/maas-installation-bare-metal-provisioning-is-easier-than-ever) MAAS brings cloud-like automation to physical servers. It helps teams discover, commission, deploy, and repurpose machines from a central control plane, turning bare metal into... 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