

Ask HN: What OSS projects need the most help with documentation? - wyclif


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brbcoding
Most of the helpers and extras on THREE.js have todo placeholders -
DirectionalLightHelper for example
[http://threejs.org/docs/#Reference/Extras.Helpers/Directiona...](http://threejs.org/docs/#Reference/Extras.Helpers/DirectionalLightHelper).

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dv35z
Just curious - as a contrary example, I would like to see links to a few OSS
projects with exemplar documentation done "right". As an example, the Django
project does a great job of treating its documentation as a "first-class
citizen". While I have used OSS software and not developed, I would guess
there are some good best practices / checklists out there for documentation
(e.g. "what a good README should contain"; recommended tools to ensure
documentation is easily contributable, versioned, and so on; "how to deploy
this software", "how to install", architecture overview, "meta" documentation
on how to contribute to the project, and so on). Would be good to see examples
of those too. Thanks!

~~~
alexatkeplar
[https://github.com/showcases/projects-with-great-
wikis](https://github.com/showcases/projects-with-great-wikis)

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wrdevos
Pgpool-II is a powerful piece of software that allows people to connection
pool a Postgres cluster, and is even capable of managing a full multi master
cluster. The docs are, however, so badly written and incomplete that it's way
too hard to set up for most people. A shame, because it's great stuff.

~~~
0172
Bucardo ([http://bucardo.org/wiki/Bucardo](http://bucardo.org/wiki/Bucardo))
is a along the same lines. It could really use some help improving
documentation.

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robertduncan
OpenSSL: [https://www.openssl.org/docs/](https://www.openssl.org/docs/)

ssl(3): [STILL INCOMPLETE] Manual page documenting the OpenSSL SSL/TLS
library.

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pjungwir
I once added a few lines to Paperclip's README to promote a method I used from
undocumented to documented. I thought it was a devious way to make them keep
it around. :-) If you are looking for places to improve documentation, it's a
nice selfish way to prioritize.

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jimaek
We have lots of features/tools/systems that need documentation
[https://github.com/jsdelivr/jsdelivr](https://github.com/jsdelivr/jsdelivr)

Any help is appreciated

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eLobato
Foreman could use some help - [http://theforeman.org/](http://theforeman.org/)
, contributions can be made to
[https://github.com/theforeman/theforeman.org](https://github.com/theforeman/theforeman.org)

In particular, use cases that demonstrate its value proposition are lacking,
API docs miss examples, and the manual has some outdated parts. The layout of
the site is a bit dated too, but "it worked for us".

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justincormack
Documentation is a scratch an itch thing to some extent, so what interests
you. If you want mentoring in documentation then look at FreeBSD which has a
docs mentor program I believe.

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jaguar86
Apache Thrift [http://thrift.apache.org/docs/](http://thrift.apache.org/docs/)
\- A feature rich RPC framework with documentation that completely sucks. The
docs page has evolved from "coming soon" over the last few months. You would
have to dig deep into the library headers to find hidden "easter egg
features".

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IshKebab
I'm going to give a niche one: VXL

[http://vxl.sourceforge.net/](http://vxl.sourceforge.net/)

It's like OpenCV but _much_ better written. The only trouble is there's almost
no documentation or tutorials for beginners.

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Oculus
Definitely doesn't need the most help, but there's been a call to action for
helping write Rails docs for the 4.2 release:
[https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/16576](https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/16576)

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billconan
I think every single of them. the two I mostly care about are webrtc and
bitcoin.

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jMyles
Hendrix can certainly use some help:
[https://github.com/hangarunderground/hendrix](https://github.com/hangarunderground/hendrix)

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WhatsName
oVirt is a great alternative to OpenStack, when it comes to managing virtual
machines, unfortunately their docs are mostly outdated or too complex for non-
devs: [http://www.ovirt.org/Home](http://www.ovirt.org/Home)

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rtcoms
[http://sailsjs.org/](http://sailsjs.org/)

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brotchie
Pandas time-series library for Python is severely lacking good documentation!

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lillecarl
[http://trinitycore.org](http://trinitycore.org)

Great project, no documentation whatsoever..

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rmrk
ruby and/or rails

