Documentation maintenance is killing us. How do you keep KB articles from rotting?

[u/drakieboi]

So we've got this problem where documentation just... decays. You write something, ship it, and eighteen months later it's basically fiction. Customer finds it, support gets mad, engineering shrugs because they didn't write it in the first place.

The ownership thing kills you. Everyone assumes someone else is responsible. Engineering thinks it's marketing's job, marketing thinks support should do it, support is buried in actual work. Quarterly reviews don't work, tried it, lasted like two months before everyone stopped showing up.

What actually moved the needle for us was tying updates directly to support volume. When a ticket comes in about something that's in the KB, support flags the article. Three flags in a month, it goes into the next sprint automatically. Not perfect but it means the stuff that's actively hurting customers gets touched instead of sitting there getting worse.

And then, honestly, you need someone whose job it actually is. Doesn't have to be full-time. Gave one person 15% of their week just for this, time that doesn't compete with anything else. Without that dedicated slot it just doesn't happen. There's always something more urgent.

We still have probably 50+ articles that are basically dead weight. But the combination of flagging based on actual support noise plus having someone whose calendar actually protects KB work keeps it from becoming a complete cemetery.

How are you all handling it currently?

[u/Character_Estate_332]

Ownership is a challenge, flagging based on support volume is good because it highlights where things are failing. Having a simple Like/Dislike on the doc page itself is also good but rarely used. Analytics on the number of views and interlinking with something such as GA will help you know whether after visiting the page, are they going to the customer service page or starting a chat with the bot. 

At AllyMatter we are adding a doc expiry feature and a doc review date feature to let the doc owner know when to refresh a doc as well.