Community-Driven Documentation for Free Software?

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."

Comments

Wiki's need ratings

[stefanlasiewski]

I'd like to know, is it a good idea to use Wiki, and is it possible to achieve decent documentation quality this way?

I prefer Wiki's over message boards because information in a Wiki usually has better organization (a good heirarchy) then in a Message Board, and it doesn't contain the level of kruft that you get in a BBS.

The thing I hate about Wiki's is that much of the information is of poor quality, questionable, or is way out of date. You often need a person to constantly go through the Wiki and fix info, remove old articles and goatcsx links, etc.

Some day, I dream of designing a Wiki that contains a rating system: Allow users to rate the info; and mark old info as "stale", which would hopefully encourage someone to update it.