Ask Slashdot: What To Do About the Sorry State of FOSS Documentation?

First time accepted submitter TWX writes I've been out of computers as a serious home-hobby for many years and in returning I'm aghast at the state of documentation for Open Source projects. The software itself has changed significantly in the last decade, but the documentation has failed to keep pace; most of what I'm finding applies to versions long since passed or were the exact same documents from when I dropped-out of hobbyist computing years ago. Take Lightdm on Ubuntu 14.04 for example- its entire configuration file structure has been revamped, but none of the documentation for more specialized or advanced uses of Lightdm in previous versions of Ubuntu has been updated for this latest release. It's actually harder now to configure some features than it was a decade ago. TLDP is close to a decade out-of-date, fragmentation between distributions has grown to the point that answers from one distro won't readily apply to another, and web forums for even specific projects are full of questions without answers, or those that head off into completely unrelated discussion, or with snarky, "it's in the documentation, stupid!" responses. Where do you go for your FOSS documentation and self-help?

Comments

Re:Read the source code

[Raseri]

On the other hand, I've noticed a steady decline in documentation for commercial software too.

Many of them seem to be going the route of "community-driven" documentation; i.e., dropping the cost of the manuals (and everything related, such as tech writers, printing, and so on), and shifting the burden of educating new users to more experienced ones. This is more or less how most FOSS projects have been documented for years, though out of necessity rather than a desire to cut yet another corner.