This page includes writings by Andy Oram about web pages, forums, and other media used by users of technology to educate each other. Major research includes (in reverse chronological order):
Growing participation, growing participants (a slideshow introduction, available in ODF, PowerPoint, and PDF formats)
API for Project Educational Tools (last revised January 31, 2009)
Programming techniques that can help you write (June 8, 2017)
FLOSS Manuals book sprint at Google, 2011 (October 17-21, 2001)Four roles for publishers: staying relevant when you are no longer a gatekeeper (June 17, 2009)
Educating computer users: the need for community/author collaboration (February 6, 2008)
Developing an improved online environment for educating computer users (February 3, 2008)
Two tools we need to improve online information (January 31, 2008)
How to Help Mailing Lists Help Readers (Results of Recent Data Analysis) (July 9, 2007)
Do-It-Yourself Documentation? Research Into the Effectiveness of Mailing Lists (August 19, 2006)
Splitting Books Open: Trends in Traditional and Online Technical Documentation (September 23, 2004)
Methods and Mechanics of Creating Reliable User Documentation (October 1991; also available in a French translation)
Smaller relevant articles include:
Foreword to Anne Gentle’s Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation (August 17, 2009)
Challenges from a book sprint: the great things about ignorance and disorder (March 23, 2009)
So when will the job of a technical editor be abolished? (December 27, 2007)
In search of micro-elites: how to get user-generated content (November 14, 2007)
If volunteer communities increasingly add value to business… (September 29, 2007)
What comes after the information age (September 4, 2007)
Online documentation: what’s missing (January 15, 2007)
The case of GNOME: improving community-generated online documentation (December 6, 2004)
Andy Oram
Editor, O’Reilly Media
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