New homes for official and community documentation

announcements
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I’m excited to announce some updates to how we handle documentation to ensure clarity and collaboration while maintaining the quality of information provided. Read on to understand how our new documentation setup works.

:writing_hand: Official documentation

We’ve updated the Documentation category to be dedicated solely to official documentation. This means that all content in its subcategories is maintained by Discourse team members, ensuring the information is accurate and up-to-date. If you’re looking for the most authoritative guides and references, this is the place!

Why only team members?

Restricting the creation and editing of official documentation to our team ensures consistency and reliability. We aim to provide precise, well-maintained resources for everyone, from new users to seasoned developers. All community members can still reply to these topics to discuss the content or suggest changes.

:people_hugging: Community wiki

Don’t worry, there’s plenty of space for your contributions too! All community-contributed documentation can now be found in the Community wiki category. This is where the expertise, tips, and collective knowledge of our vibrant community come together.

Who can contribute?

Users of Trust Level 2 and above have the power to create and edit topics in Community wiki. This empowers experienced users to share their knowledge, adding richness and diversity to our community resources. It also means that trusted community members can edit any community documentation they find that is incorrect or outdated.

:question: Why this change?

This policy is designed to balance the need for official, maintained documentation and the valuable input that our community provides. It also delivers a clear structure for users seeking information - whether they need official guidance or community advice.

We value the contributions from all of you, and we believe the move to a dedicated space for your documentation contributions will help them thrive, and receive the attention they deserve.

:derek_pointing: We need you!

The community wiki already has a head start on being a robust, community-driven space for learning and knowledge-sharing, and we’d love more of your input. If you have great tutorials, configurations, or advice, Community wiki awaits your contributions!

You can find this documentation policy in its permanent home here:

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May I know what will happen to the Scribe badge?

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Is there a straightforward way to search both documentation sources simultaneously? I’m aware that I can search across multiple categories, but that’s more cumbersome than simply adding ‘Documentation’ with the help of autocomplete.

I think I can use in:docs instead, because both categories are added to that? in:kb which also worked for Discourse Docs doesn’t seem to work.

And how does it work for subcategories? For example how do I search for all information written for users. Can I search in Users and Using Discourse at the same time?

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A classical tag example. But… then there would be so massive amount of tags it is close to impossible manage.

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The Scribe badge has been updated to cover contributions to the community wiki :slight_smile:

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Yes - you can use in:docs and it will search topics in Documentation and Community wiki at the same time.

The search will include topics in the subcategories, so those are already a part of the results.

For that, you would need to specify categories:users,using-discourse in the search.

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But all those need quite an in-depth Discourse knowledge, because none of them is supported in the (advanced) search interface.
Shouldn’t the documentation be as easy to search as possible?

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I think this rather highlights things we can improve in the Discourse UI. Notably, allowing multiple categories to be selected in the advanced search, amongst other things.

This presents a great opportunity and extra motivation to work on updates like that, so we’ll see what we can do there! We’ll discuss this, and I’ll circle back here with any updates.

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