Governance is the set of rules that keep your documentation trustworthy as it scales. As more people contribute, you need guardrails: who must approve changes, w...
Governance is the set of rules that keep your documentation trustworthy as it scales. As more people contribute, you need guardrails: who must approve changes, w...
Governance is the set of rules that keep your documentation trustworthy as it scales. As more people contribute, you need guardrails: who must approve changes, who owns which content, who reviews it, and how you catch pages before they go stale. Doxbrix lets you encode these rules so quality is enforced automatically rather than relying on everyone to remember the process.
All of these controls live in Settings → Project → Governance.
Why governance matters
Without governance, three problems creep in as a docs team grows:
- Inconsistent quality — anyone can publish anything, so standards drift.
- Orphaned content — no one owns a page, so when it's wrong, no one fixes it.
- Stale content — pages slowly fall out of date with the product, eroding reader trust.
The governance settings address each of these directly.
The governance settings
| Setting | Options | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| **Page owner mode** | Optional · Required | Whether every page must have an owner. |
| **Default reviewer mode** | Project default · None · Page owner · Project owner | Who is assigned to review new pages by default. |
| **Review cadence (days)** | e.g. **90** | How often mature content should be re-reviewed. |
| **Stale-content threshold (days)** | e.g. **180** | When [Docs Health](/ai/docs-health) flags a page as stale. |
| **Approval requirement** | Project review · Section review · No required approval | The publishing approval policy. |
Approval requirement
The Approval requirement determines what must happen before a page can be published — it's the setting that plugs directly into the review workflow:
- No required approval — anyone with publish rights publishes directly. The top-bar button reads Publish. Best for small teams and internal docs.
- Section review — drafts are submitted and approved per section (group) before publishing. Good for medium teams that batch related changes.
- Project review — every page must be reviewed and approved before going live. Best for high-stakes, customer-facing, or regulated content.
Go to Settings → Project → Governance.
Choose No required approval, Section review, or Project review.
Pick a Default reviewer mode so submitted pages route to the right person automatically.
Reviewers and ownership
- Default reviewer mode decides who reviews new pages: the Project default reviewer, the Page owner, the Project owner, or None (pick a reviewer manually at submit time). Editors and above show as Eligible reviewers in the members panel.
- Page owner mode set to Required ensures every page has an accountable owner. Owners are the people responsible for a page's accuracy and are the natural target for review and freshness routing.
Content freshness
Stale documentation is worse than no documentation — it actively misleads. Two settings keep content current:
- Review cadence (days) — how often mature content should be re-reviewed (e.g. every 90 days).
- Stale-content threshold (days) — when a page that hasn't been updated should be flagged as stale (e.g. 180 days).
Stale pages roll up into the project's Docs Health dashboard, so you can see at a glance how much content is overdue and prioritize accordingly.
Style and consistency
Beyond approvals, governance includes keeping a consistent voice and structure:
- Templates — enforce consistent page shapes with page templates so every guide and endpoint looks the same.
- AI style policy — codify tone and terminology rules that the Writing Copilot and Improve with AI follow. See Workspace AI policy.
A recommended setup
A typical governance setup for a growing team:
Set Page owner mode to Required so every page is accountable.
Set Approval requirement to Section review (or Project review for customer-facing docs).
Set Default reviewer mode to Page owner so feedback reaches the right person.
Set a Review cadence of 90 days and a Stale-content threshold of 180 days.
Check the Docs Health dashboard regularly and act on stale or low-scoring pages.