In the Simplifying Complexity section of my site, I published a new article about how to ensure information harmony across a larger documentation landscape, where other articles might contain similar themes and information. In the article, I dive into two factors that increase complexity in a system: specialization and interconnectedness. Relevant to documentation scenarios, when subject matter experts contribute specialized articles into a larger system without understanding how their individual article interacts with other information in the system, the result is often a redundant, contradictory, and ever-increasing jumble of content. In this article, I explore ways to solve this problem through better metadata, primarily evaluating tags and whether they can help identify all known instances of content. You can read the article here: Ensuring information harmony in the larger documentation landscape.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.
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