The Good Docs Project can help you

When I saw this slide (see screenshot) at fossy.us a couple of weeks ago, I realized something had changed. A new group had made its mark on the landscape of software documentation. It’s The Good Docs Project (TGDP), at https://www.thegooddocsproject.dev/. It’s an open source community, started in 2019. Their aim is to:

“… educate and empower people to create high-quality documentation by providing them with templates, best practices, and tools to enhance their documentation in open source and beyond.”

The slide was presented by a Ph.D candidate at Northwestern, Matt Gaughan, https://mgaughan.net/. He described his research based on the 2000+ Git repositories associated with the @Debian project (and their communities).

There are huge communities associated with Debian, Mozilla, and GitHub. It’s a statement to see TGDP at the same level. And they’ve earned it. They:

• Are part of the @GitLab open source partners program
• Have templates used by major software companies
• Use working groups to organize best practices to help others in the industry

Even more, they publicize their “internal” discussions. They share minutes from their working groups. Anyone can review their proposals. I’ve just read their DEI proposals which encourages more people to join their leadership. It’s how their leadership avoids burnout.

Other sessions at fossy.us described best practices in community management. Among the technical writing and documenation communities that I know, TGDP is the only one that meets such standards. As I posted on their Slack:

“I look at TGDP, and I’m thinking: templates, community, metrics, governance – no other independent group in the software documentation field has all of these features. One of the themes from fossy.us is the health of OSS communities, and you’ve got it!”

Like any healthy community, they’re not afraid of change. They’re talking about moving from Slack to Discord.

While I’ve been watching TGDP for years, I see now what they’ve become. I’m impressed! (Full disclosure: I’ve never been a part of TGDP. I’ve only been a user of their templates. With this post, I’m saying that I’m thankful for what they’ve done.)