Open-source documentation: in search of user-driven, just-in-time writing

Iterative development models allow developers to respond quickly to changing user requirements, but place increasing demands on writers who must handle increasing amounts of change with ever-decreasing resources. In the software development world, one solution to this problem is open-source development: allowing the users to set requirements and priorities by actually contributing to the development of the software. This results in just-in-time software improvements that are explicitly user-driven, since they are actually developed by users.In this article we will discuss how the open source model can be extended to the development of documentation. In many open-source projects, the role of writer has remained unchanged: documentation development remains a specialized activity, owned by a single writer or group of writers, who work as best they can with key developers and frequently out-of-date specification documents. However, a potentially more rewarding approach is to open the development of the documentation to the same sort of community involvement that gives rise to the software: using forums and mailing lists as the tools for developing documentation, driven by debate and dialogue among the actual users and developers.Just as open-source development blurs the line between user and developer, open-source documentation will blur the line between reader and writer. Someone who is a novice reader in one area may be an expert author in another. Two key activities emerge for the technical writer in such a model: as gatekeeper and moderator for FAQs and formal documentation, and as literate expert user of the system they are documenting.