Re: Knowledge Bases -- What are they, really?

[Chris Despopoulos <despopoulos_chriss -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

 Thanks Shari...
Just to be obnoxious, I'll submit that your last sentence doesn't really distinguish the two. So-called documentation might be written as "topics", but isn't a KB written as articles? And as you point out, Docs are increasingly accessible through multiple routes, search and facets included. (We deliver some of our documentation as part of the GUI, for example.)

One difference I see that is not flattering to a KB is this... To emphasize the web-like nature, there's less attempt to assign ordering or hierarchy to the articles. And indeed, I believe you never get to see anything like a TOC. But really, if there's any navigation "path" at all, that ordering is there somewhere. But just to reinforce the web-ishness of it, the KB doesn't share that intelligence with the reader. Take 10 points from Gryfindor!
OTOH, there's a WIKI-like freedom that can really be a good thing. Maybe that's what you mean when you say it's not written in a topic-oriented way... There's no hard/fast template for an article. So long as the article imparts some value, anything goes. This can be good -- more agile, more open to collaboration, and maybe more direct injection of information for the reader... 10 points to Gryfindor! (But I can get into the benefits of structure to make content processing possible... That's a different subject.)



    On Thursday, October 29, 2020, 10:33:56 AM EDT, Shari Punyon <sharipunyon -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:  
 
 I thinkÂof Knowledge Bases as moreÂinterconnected and more frequently updated by more people.Â
A Knowledge Base is a flavor of documentation. Documentation is probably (in that person's mind) more of a static manual set, while a Knowledge Base is more like a Wiki, or some other way of serving up specific bits of information via search. Part of it is just knowing the new fancy buzzword, which is shorthand for what much, but not all, documentation is moving towards. Part of it is focusing on providing a certain flavor of documentation, which is not just written a certain way (topic oriented), but served up a certain way (accessible through multiple routes, esp via search).



  
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