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 four 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
Removing an article that documents a feature you deleted takes minutes and immediately stops your bot answering from it. Always redirect rather than delete, so you keep the ranking.
Merge
Two 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 three 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.
$79Write release notes people and AI can useIncludes finding the articles a release just broke.Start with the free health check. If it tells you a quarter of your library should be retired, that's not bad news, that's the cheapest afternoon of your year.
Start with the free health check →