Open Web Docs launches with a familiar goal and a different playbook

When Mozilla scaled back its MDN team last year, the question of who would look after the web platform's shared documentation suddenly became urgent. A new initiative, Open Web Docs, has now stepped in with an answer — and it is deliberately not the one tried before.

Robert Nyman's announcement describes the project as a way to keep documentation on existing, de facto standard resources like MDN Web Docs healthy over the long term, without tying that work to any single vendor. The project does not plan to build a new documentation site; its staff and partner network will instead spend their effort contributing directly to the platforms already in use.

That point of emphasis matters, because it is the main distinction between Open Web Docs and the earlier Web Platform Docs effort — a separate platform that ultimately did not stick. The organizers are explicit about the difference: Web Platform Docs created a new home for documentation, while this project's mission is to improve what already exists.

The early checklist checks out

The project appears to have the ingredients previous community documentation efforts often lacked. Leadership was the first thing in place: Florian Scholz joined as Content Lead in November 2020, with a mandate to work out the initial workstreams with stakeholders. The 2021 plan covers three concrete areas:

  • Coordinating with Mozilla's MDN writers and engineers through the recent Yari infrastructure transition
  • Prioritizing and pushing forward core documentation work as well as browser compatibility data
  • Building a contributor community and improving JavaScript documentation

Staffing also seems to be moving: roughly eleven people are already involved, and the announcement indicates more hiring is underway. On the funding side, the project's first-year budget is already covered.

The commitment covers the first full year, from November to November. Whether the major contributors renew annually remains to be seen, but even a single year of focused investment at this level could move the documentation ecosystem forward in ways that outlast the initial funding cycle.