Should we keep the MSDN Wiki on WDK doc pages?
If you view WDK docs on MSDN, you probably know that a Wiki feature is available at the bottom of each WDK doc page. This MSDN-provided feature, under the green “Community Content” heading, is meant to encourage MSDN readership to post added value to any MSDN topic.
We enabled this Wiki feature in the WDK docs on MSDN about a year and a half ago. Frankly, at this point we’re questioning the value of this feature to our driver developer audience. So, we’d like your feedback.
Here’s the issue. In theory, MSDN community content is supposed to be a tool by which our customers can add value to our documentation. If you click on the little question mark next to the green “Community Content” heading, you’ll get a pop-up that cites “code samples, tips, undocumented scenarios, links to additional resources” as likely types of contributions.
In reality, what do the community content posts in the WDK docs consist of? In January of 2009, 18 new wiki entries were created:
· Two identified possible doc errors. We opened doc bugs to track these. I’ll leave these comments in place until the docs are fixed, even though wiki guidelines explicitly tell customers that the wiki is not meant for bug reports.
· Four contained managed signatures that one person provided for structures that CDROM storage drivers use when receiving IOCTLs. Here’s an example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms808137.aspx. I left those in place, assuming someone might conceivably write a managed app that sends IOCTLs to a CDROM.
· Six were questions from Windows users (such as “my Drive Ethernet Adapter is not korect is A SiS 9 -- is not prebaring in windows drive so i cannot working with it”) I deleted those because the WDK doc team does not have the resources or mandate to provide free user assistance to the non-driver-development Windows user community.
· Three contained nonsense, which I deleted.
· One contained just a long list of bugcheck codes. I deleted this.
· Two contained entries in a foreign language that I was unable to translate. I deleted these.
January was a pretty typical month. Based on this information, and your own observation of wiki posting in the WDK docs, do you think that wiki posts are adding value to driver developers?
Tell us what you think.
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Do you think the WDK doc wiki is useful to the driver writing community?
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Are there ways in which we could make the wiki more useful?
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Should we get rid of the wiki, or should we keep it?
You can answer these questions by adding a comment to this blog post or by sending us an email at ddksurv1@microsoft.com.
Please know that we definitely want to receive feedback about our documentation from the driver development community. We want to know about documentation errors and holes. The best ways to send us feedback include:
If your answers to the three questions above indicate that you’d like us to continue to provide the WDK doc wiki, we will do so.
— Richard Brown [MSFT], Senior Programming Writer
