Software technologies are used by programmers with diverse backgrounds. To fulfill programmers' need for information, enthusiasts contribute numerous learning resources that vary in style and content, which act as documentation for the corresponding technology. We interviewed 26 volunteer documentation contributors, i.e. documentors, to understand why and how they create such documentation. From a qualitative analysis of our interviews, we identified a total of sixteen considerations that documentors have during the documentation contribution process, along three dimensions, namely motivations, topic selection techniques, and styling objectives. We grouped related considerations based on common underlying themes, to elicit five software documentor mindsets that occur during documentation contribution activities. We propose a structure of mindsets, and their associated considerations across the three dimensions, as a framework for reasoning about the documentation contribution process. This framework can inform information seeking as well as documentation creation tools about the context in which documentation was contributed.

翻译：软件技术被具有不同背景的程序员所使用。为满足程序员对信息的需求，技术爱好者贡献了大量风格与内容各异的学习资源，这些资源充当了相应技术的文档。我们访谈了26位志愿文档贡献者（即文档编写者），以探究他们创建此类文档的动因与方式。通过对访谈内容的定性分析，我们识别出文档编写者在文档贡献过程中存在的十六项考量因素，这些因素分布于三个维度：动机、主题选择技巧与风格目标。基于共同的内在主题，我们将相关考量因素进行归类，从而归纳出文档贡献活动中呈现的五种软件文档编写者思维模式。我们提出一种思维模式结构及其在三个维度上对应考量因素的分析框架，用以推理论证文档贡献过程。该框架能为信息检索工具及文档创建工具提供文档贡献情境的参考依据。