> "I keep hearing 'I checked the wiki, it was not there' — but the topic is there, just not phrased the way they asked."
^pain
A collective retrieval pain. Articles are written in the producer's taxonomy; consumers ask in their own language. The KB covers a fraction of the actual frequently-asked questions, and users notice — they stop using it. The pain is invisible to authors who only see "what we wrote" and not "what people searched and didn't find".
## Discovery questions
- "If you sampled the last 20 questions your support team got, how many are answered directly in your KB?"
- "Tell me about the last time someone said 'I checked the wiki, it wasn't there'."
- "What share of your customer or internal questions get handled by the docs versus by a Slack ping to a senior person?"
^discovery-questions