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Community-Driven Documentation for Free Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the more-the-merrier dept.

const_k asks: "I'm maintaining TightVNC, a popular free software project. As with many other free and open source projects, there is a problem with having comprehensive documentation. Currently, I'm thinking about launching a sort of community-driven documentation project, using Wiki as an engine that would help volunteer contributors to write and improve the documentation. I'd like to know, is it a good idea to use Wiki, and is it possible to achieve decent documentation quality this way? What software and technologies other free or open source software projects use, and what are the results, in terms of completeness and quality of the documentation? Any pointers and suggestions would be greatly appreciated."

3 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Two words: by Lazyhound · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Message boards.

    Can't beat those for user-based support.

  2. inefficient? by Tuxinatorium · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's a lot harder to write documentation that somebody else wrote and didn't document than to write documentation on your own code. Why not have developers start writing some decent documentation for a change...

    --
    Repeal the DMCA!
  3. wiki used successfully on cocoon by stinkyelf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the wiki that cocoon uses works very well...