
A decade of writing at Mozilla - e15ctr0n
https://www.bitstampede.com/2016/04/03/a-decade-of-writing-at-mozilla/
======
windlep
Unfortunately this post won't get many upvotes cause its not negative about an
employer (everyone loves dirty drama, the HN upvotes say it all), so I'm quite
happy to see someone post about some great work they've done.

Documentation is a long and fairly thankless job, for some reason I don't see
bootcamps kicking out technical writers, which is a shame because we need more
great technical writing. Thanks for all the hard work making development
better for so many!

------
nathancahill
Oh wow, MDN has been a game changer in documentation IMO. I'm glad to see it
starting to show up higher than w3schools for more and more searches
(w3schools' page rank is so high since they've been around for forever).

Thanks for writing!

~~~
lakkal
w3schools is where I've gotten most of my DOM/HTML information as a non-web
(for the most part) developer - simply because it does show up first in
searches. I'd never heard of MDN until now, but it looks really good. I'll
definitely look there next time I need to know something.

~~~
nathancahill
Here's a modified Google browser search engine to help you out. Adds
-site:w3schools.com to all searches:
[https://github.com/nathancahill/fuck-w3schools](https://github.com/nathancahill/fuck-w3schools)

~~~
lakkal
Thanks.

------
klez
I've had the pleasure to volunteer with Eric on MDN for more or less one year.
He and the other staff and volunteers are amazing people. Then I had the
pleasure to meet them in person last year in Canada for the Mozilla work week
and see how things are organized in person.

It's incredible how much stuff you can churn out when a lot of work is done by
volunteers and not only paid staff.

Also, as a volunteer, you have a lot of freedom in starting projects inside
the main one, there's a real sense of meritocracy (you are valued for the work
you do). I, for example, have been the topic leader for the MDN Glossary, a
sub-section of the learning area.

I recommend volunteering on MDN to anyone who wants to start technical writing
and needs some guidance.

~~~
beardicus
Thanks for the pointer. I'm just starting to toy with the idea of shifting
focus towards technical writing, and never would've thought of contributing to
MDN (though I've referenced it often enough, of course). I'll give it a look
once registration opens back up.

Can you recommend any other resources that've helped you along the way?

~~~
klez
> Can you recommend any other resources that've helped you along the way?

Everything you need is available in the meta-documentation[0] and on project-
specific DocStatus pages (for example, the one for the Glossary[1] and the
more general one for the Learning Area[2]). Also, as a corollary to what
Sheppy says in the other reply to your post, ping on #mdn, people are there to
help you.

Finally, you can join on the bi-weekly meeting on IRC [3]

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Contribute](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Contribute) [1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Doc_status/Glos...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Doc_status/Glossary) [2] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Doc_status/Lear...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Doc_status/Learn) [3]
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/MDN/Meetings/Community](https://wiki.mozilla.org/MDN/Meetings/Community)

------
hitlin37
Thanks for writing!MDN has been nicely documented and very very useful,
especially for beginners in web dev.

------
Acanthae
Love this. As a technical writer, seeing another writer -- especially one so
prolific -- positive about this job is really great. Ten years, damn.

------
r12s
Congrats on the 10 years and thanks for the inspiration that is MDN! Respect.

And +1 to the sentiment in the comments here. As a marketer and technical
writer on an open source project, documentation is an often overlooked part of
what makes a good project great. It's a somewhat thankless task, since if done
well few really notice and if done badly it's painfully obvious.

------
amitzur
Loved it. I didn't know that you are doing in-browser editing. Is that done
with document.designMode ? On top of any particular rich text editor?

------
sgarrity
Great work, much appreciated.

