I run into this exact problem at work. I focus a lot on writing good documentation, and then no one can find it, or they ask me where it is. One solution I employ is just linking all documentation to a single document (like a table of contents) so people only have to remember 1 place to go. Only if it’s unclear on that table do they ask me, so it happens less often
I was thinking about this. I think its okay to be the index if it means you only need to spend a couple of minutes digging out the link and sending to them vs recreating the full explanation each time
My stuff isn't particularly popular, so it doesn't take much of my bandwidth (well, actually, one project is very popular, but that has been taken over by a fairly energetic and talented team).
The problem with docs is that unlike code, documentation has no mechanism to keep it updated as things change. Even something really close to the code like code comments tend to get stale. Separate docs are hopeless - unless you are the owner of the code and the doc, and have great discipline, docs are almost guaranteed to diverge from the code.
When this happens, it’s tough to say what’s worse - a stale, and sometimes wrong document, or no document at all. So, in my career I’ve come to rely less and less on docs, and more and more on just reading the code. Docs can lie - code rarely does.
This.
Indexing is So. Damn. Important.
Documentation and knowledge discovery is crucial, and still very much a WIP.
I don't claim to have the answer. I write a lot of really relevant, heavy-duty documentation, with my projects.
That no one reads.
I know this, because they keep asking me questions that are in the docs.
I am their index.