The Software Documentor Mindset

TL;DR

This paper explores the motivations, techniques, and styles of volunteer software documentors, proposing a framework of five mindsets that influence how they create diverse learning resources for programmers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework of five software documentor mindsets, derived from qualitative analysis of contributor interviews, to better understand documentation creation processes.

Findings

Identified 16 considerations influencing documentation activities.

Grouped considerations into five distinct mindsets.

Framework can inform tool design for documentation and information seeking.

Abstract

Software technologies are used by programmers with diverse backgrounds. To fulfill programmers' need for information, enthusiasts contribute numerous learning resources that vary in style and content, which act as documentation for the corresponding technology. We interviewed 26 volunteer documentation contributors, i.e. documentors, to understand why and how they create such documentation. From a qualitative analysis of our interviews, we identified a total of sixteen considerations that documentors have during the documentation contribution process, along three dimensions, namely motivations, topic selection techniques, and styling objectives. We grouped related considerations based on common underlying themes, to elicit five software documentor mindsets that occur during documentation contribution activities. We propose a structure of mindsets, and their associated considerations across the three dimensions, as a framework for reasoning about the documentation contribution process. This framework can inform information seeking as well as documentation creation tools about the context in which documentation was contributed.