With the launch of Stacks 2.0 Mainnet rapidly approaching, it’s extremely important to ensure documentation is comprehensive and easily digestible. We expect an influx of newcomers to the community, and the docs will often be the first point of contact with Stacks tech.
To ensure the best possible experience, the Stacks community and Hiro joined forces to take the next big leap towards a better developer experience on the Stacks 2.0 network: our very first documentation week.
Be the change you want to see in the docs
Blockchain platforms are often laid out in technical terms that are only digestible by early adopters with sufficient domain knowledge. New developers frequently find it difficult to get started building on blockchain. Have you ever looked at docs and asked yourself: “Why is this so important? How would I implement the concept described? How does the tech work under-the-hood? Well, we all did!
Many of our very passionate community members experienced the same obstacles when they first onboarded. There is a wealth of fresh learnings and gained domain knowledge that is just waiting to be unleashed. And that is precisely what we did with Docs Week!
A week just for … docs?
During the first week of November, we kicked off an effort to overhaul, refactor, and create technical content, docs system updates, and illustrations to make it easier for new devs to get started with Stacks 2.0. The result was simply incredible:
- We received 47 Github PRs from 17 contributors and merged 87% of them within the same week.
- The changes resulted in 90+ updated files with 2,500+ code line additions and 3,000+ deletions.
- We saw the second highest contribution amount since the creation of the docs, only surpassed by the complete docs system overhaul done a few months before.
- We awarded 12 contributors with an ultimate Stacks swag package.
Not possible without our community
Admittedly, we thought it might be difficult to get everyone, not just Blockstack engineers, to contribute. Docs updates require not only a good understanding of the technology, but also an understanding of the documentation needs, processes, conventions, writing styles, and much more. There are a numerous barriers for a willing contributor to make even small changes – let alone, creating advanced tutorials, guides, and changes to the docs system itself. While we worked towards lowering that barrier, we did not anticipate to get more contributors from community members than from Blockstack engineers themselves! Take a look at the winners of the docs week:
| Prize | Winner | Top contribution |
|---|---|---|
 DOCTOR DOCS |
Friedger Müffke | Overhaul of the Clarity references. |
 FIX-IT FELIX |
Ken Liao, Agnel Vishal, Mark Hendrickson | Update Stacks node installation instructions. |
 GREATOR CREATOR |
Harini Anantha Rajan, Ethan Tan, Diwaker Gupta, Joshmatix | Add PoX summary. |
 REFACTOR REBEL |
Aaron Blankstein, Charlie Cantoni | Clean up BNS content. |
 EXPERIENCE EXPERT |
Kyran Burraston | Added mobile search functionality. |
 VISUAL VANGUARD |
Jasper Jansz | Mining guide illustrations. |
 INTERACTIVITY IDOL |
Ludovic Galabru | Interactive tour of Clarity. |
Doctor Docs
Friendly face Friedger Müffke took home the Docs Week crown with a whopping 13 submissions! He had so many contributions that he couldn’t be described with a single category. As a result, the title of Doctor Docs was created just for him! With his stethoscope and labcoat, he did intensive surgery on the docs and now the patient is feeling better than ever.
Please join us in extending a big applause to all of our contributors! By the way, this is not the only reward they get! Everyone on the list got an ultimate Stacks swag package:
Thanks to their support, we can be confident that the docs are relevant and up to date, bugs are squashed, walls of text have been made more readable with illustrations, and code snippets have descriptions of their functionality. A more dynamic, multi-factorial docs system that results in a reduced learning curve!
So, what’s next for docs?
Although we gave documentation our undivided attention for an entire week, you can still keep the docs in your heart year-round! Documentation is never 100% finished. It is a living, breathing knowledge repository for interacting with the Stacks ecosystem. There is always a need for new tutorials, helpful visual aids, code snippets, typo checks, navigation restructuring, content creation…you name it!
Here’s our mission to you, Stacker: Put the team Docs on your back! We’re constantly blown away by how much the community has learned about Stacks 2.0, PoX, and Stacking over the last year. Nobody has better domain knowledge than our diehard StackHackers out there. Therefore, nobody is better positioned to contribute learnings to the docs! Spent all weekend hacking together a smart contract? Why not add some of your Clarity shortcuts to the docs so others can follow your lead?
To continue the momentum, we will have regular check-ins with the Docs working group, open to everyone on our Discord channel. We encourage community members to join to keep their finger on the pulse of documentation tasks. With your help, every week can be docs week! 
We’re also hiring an official Docs Lead to supercharge our efforts going forward! If this is you – or someone you know, please reach out to Alex Graebe at [email protected] for more details.