I'm a bit unsure how I should shape this, but what I did try to say is that there is no self regulating infrastructure for the documentation (what I know and if there is, it is poorly "advertised" itself.), which would allow "open source" style of documentation evolution,
The normal documentation is also open source, all code is available open source. but just like with the source code, only people with a commit bit can finalize a change. Luckily the documentation is textformat so you can edit locally and submit patches in good open source tradition.
And for the rest there is the wiki that is truely open.
It is just not a social website, but the last time I checked, I can't go to Oracle, Microsoft, Python or PHP and change the maindocs there either.
E.g. Where is the edit button here?
https://docs.python.org/3/distributing/index.html ?
My idea for that is obviously that there would be this b
ackbone structure of these tutorials documents and users then can broaden the subjects and add more stucture, but the backbone system will lead and instruct the contributors so that the "documentation tree" will keep its structure informatic and easy to use. This for distributing the workload because as we know this is volunteer work.
I don't know any major projects that work that way. Most smaller projects resort to a wiki, with some desperate people trying to maintain structure and mediate
in astrodurf, usually fighting a losing battle.
How that could be build? For that I have no definite answer as I have no experience of anything like open source development or shared document writing.
To my best knowledge many smaller projects use wikis, and larger projects use non publically editable documentation systems with patches over ticketing systems. Just like FPC. In even larger projects there are fulltime employed docworkers somewhere.
Somekind of instructing (and supervising) documentation core team wouldn't be a bad thing. Somekind of semistandard page and chapter structure template with some guidance commentary might be good for wiki.
The critique of the sidetracking documentation is another story, based on my own observations from the last few weeks.
This as a quick reply, I need to return in better time.
I'm not volonteering for anything wiki. I never saw quality wiki docs, specially not in the programming areas. They all labyrinths are without heads or tails. It is not something that works, it is what is done when nobody really wants to write docs, in the hope that something magically falls together.
Usually maintenance spikes, quality contributions are low, and people that should be working on docs are actually mediating turf wars and vandalism in the wiki