Improve the Knowledge Base

Revision Information
  • Revision id: 21288
  • Created:
  • Creator: Michael Verdi
  • Comment: Updated instructions and image for the new sidebar
  • Reviewed: Yes
  • Reviewed:
  • Reviewed by: Verdi
  • Is approved? Yes
  • Is current revision? No
  • Ready for localization: Yes
  • Readied for localization:
  • Readied for localization by: Verdi
Revision Source
Revision Content

Thanks for helping with our Knowledge Base. For millions of people around the world, these articles are the face of Mozilla when they have a problem or question about one of our products. Improving the Knowledge Base is the way to get the biggest bang for our collective effort. A single article can quickly help tens of thousands of people each week.

Create an account and say hello

As a nonprofit, open-source project, we rely on our community of volunteers to write and maintain the majority of the articles. You don't need special permission to work on them — this is a wiki that anyone can edit. All you need is an account. Once you've got one, the next thing you should do is say hello:

  • Introduce yourself. We'd love to hear from you.
  • You can also talk to us in the #sumo IRC channel (chat room). This is where Firefox Help contributors help each other. I'm "verdi" in there. If you don't have an IRC program, you can connect with this web app.

Get started!

The most common thing we do in the glamorous world of Knowledge Base maintenance is to try to improve the articles we already have. If you see something that can be better, show the article editing tools and then click Discussion and let us know what needs to be be fixed or click Edit Article and make the change yourself.

Tip: A great place to get started is with one of these articles that need to be updated.
Discuss-Edit Article

If you're really interested in editing and writing documentation, here are a few resources that should help explain how we do things:

  • About the Knowledge Base — is an overview of the mechanics of our Knowledge Base (e.g. prioritization and scheduling).
  • Writing guide for Knowledge Base articles — is a guide to writing techniques and styles that we use to make articles more engaging and effective.
  • Add images and screenshots to Knowledge Base articles — is a step-by-step guide to creating screenshots and including them in articles.
  • Markup chart — is our wiki markup reference. It gives examples and shows the markup that produces them.
  • How to use {for} — this is the special wiki markup that lets us show instructions for Windows, Mac, or different Firefox versions.
  • Using Templates — templates are reusable pieces of content. You can include a complicated set of step-by-step instructions in multiple articles by using a template.