You know the help center needs work. You've known for about a year. The reason you haven't started isn't laziness, it's that "fix the docs" isn't a task, it's a mood, with no obvious first article and no obvious last one.
Here's what makes it a task. Most of your articles shouldn't be fixed. They should be merged into something better, quietly retired, or left completely alone. Improving an article is the most expensive option available to you and it's usually the wrong one.
There's a risk worth naming before you start. Old articles are also the pages holding your search rankings, and they're what your AI is answering from right now. Get this wrong and you lose traffic you spent years earning.
First: sort, don't fix
Before touching anything, get every article into one of 4 piles: retire, merge, refresh, leave alone. Most people are surprised how much lands in retire and leave alone, and how little actually needs rewriting.
Then: act differently on each pile
Retire
The fastest win, and usually the biggest one
Retire only what nobody reads, searches for or asks support about, and that no customer still has. A feature that's gone for new customers is often still in use by existing ones, so check before you remove it, and keep the article with a first line saying who it's for. When you do retire one, redirect rather than delete, so you keep the ranking.
Merge
2 articles on the same question compete with each other
In search and in a retrieval system, which picks one and may not pick the better one. Merging beats improving, and it's cheaper.
Refresh
Last, because it's the most expensive thing on the list
And the least of it needs doing. Do this pile only after retire and merge are done, and only for articles that genuinely survive the sort.
Leave alone
Most of your library belongs here
Articles that are accurate, found, and used. The most common mistake in a triage is touching these. Leave them, and spend your time on the other 3 piles.
Stop it happening again
Docs go stale for one reason: nothing connects a release to the articles it just made wrong. Until that link exists you'll be back here in a year.
$59Write release notes people and AI can useIncludes finding the articles a release just broke.Start with the free health check. It takes 10 minutes and tells you where to look first. The habits that keep a help center true, retiring articles safely among them, are the subject of the course Keeping it true.
Start with the free health check →