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Plan for Wiki Development ​

Daedalus, as a startup, has very limited funds and manpower. Since our main target right now is making our first MVP, I recommend creating a basic wiki that we can improve over time. The following is my proposal for the steps we should take in developing the wiki.

Overview ​

The Daedalus wiki serves a vital purpose in our organization; that is, to create a body of information that we can easily reference for training and on-field use.

There are three things that we need to create:

  • Wiki content
  • Directory of wiki articles
  • Protocols for creating, editing, and revising wiki articles

I recommend that we first create basic wiki content, focusing on encoding information through written means and putting the format and screenshots at a lower priority.

However, we will also need to create the directory hand-in-hand with creating content. I believe that creating the directory early on will take us less time than creating all kinds of content without a proper structure.

Lastly, the protocols for creating wiki articles should be created and revised organically, so as to follow the most efficient path to maintaining the wiki and exploring other related projects in the future.

Creation of Wiki Content ​

For the wiki content, we will need categorize wiki articles into two kinds: guides and descriptive articles.

Guides are articles that tell users how to do something step-by-step. These should be our topmost priority as we seem to need to onboard new members as quickly as possible.

However, we will first need a survey on what kinds of guides our team will need, plus the experience of our expert members Artifex and sir MJrolex to know what kinds of other things we might need.

As the technical writer, I volunteer to write these articles as soon as I can. While I'd welcome volunteers, I hope that you guys could focus more on learning things for your roles.

Meanwhile, descriptive articles are descriptions about the things we develop, our custom APIs and libraries, and complex features that require a map of sorts.

These articles serve two purposes. One is as reference for when we need to know how to do something with the things we do. Second is for our clients and customers when they need to know more about our products.

Descriptive articles can wait until we have actually started developing things.

I recommend writing about the following articles:

  • Basic style guide
  • Protocols

Wiki Content Creation Phases ​

First Phase: Pre-MVP Phase In the first phase, we should focus on creating our protocols and step-by-step guides. The protocols are never final during this phase; they are subject to change depending on the needs of the development team. Similarly, the list of guides that we need to write is also subject to change.

During this phase, we can work with guides that do not have screenshots yet. Most of the wiki-related effort should be left to creating minimally useable guides. We can add in code snippets as needed, just don't focus too much on the style guide.

Second Phase: MVP Development Phase During the proper development of the MVP, efforts on the wiki should focus on MVP-related articles. Emphasis should be placed on coding standards and documenting development-related information. We can forego user-focused wiki articles until we have a release ready version.

By this time, we should have had a basic style guide in place. This will lessen the workload during the next phase.

Third Phase: Pre-release During this version, wiki efforts should place higher emphasis on public information articles regarding the MVP. This phase is characterized by a start of public announcements for the MVP, as well as a push toward making publicly-available information for new users.

All efforts on the wiki should be placed into making the MVP-related articles as good as they can be. Once done, we can move to developing the style guide.

Fourth Phase: MVP Release Day and Forward At this point, there shouldn't be much information to write about in the wiki. Efforts should be placed in developing the style guide and updating previously-made articles. This should help make the development for the next product be much smoother, as well as allow more manpower into the development team.

Directory of Wiki Articles ​

I expect our wiki to grow large, much like fandom wikis and Wikipedia. Hence we will need a map to know where to look for things. I suggest making a directory page, with categories created when things get bigger so as to allow it to grow organically.

There are two ways to maintain the wiki directory. We can have people link their wiki articles to it right before the Pull Request. Or, as technical writer, I could also just do it by myself. I will need everyone's opinion on this.

Protocols for the Wiki ​

The plan for the wiki protocols are written in a separate suggestion article. But basically, we need a plan that ensures correctness in the wiki while allowing everyone to write about anything.