
Ask HN: Open-source projects that could use documentation help? - untothebreach
Hey HN, a friend of mine is a budding technical writer, and is trying to get some actual documentation experience under her belt. Anyone have a project they could use some docs for?
======
hangonhn
AngularJS can really, really use some help there.

[https://docs.angularjs.org/guide](https://docs.angularjs.org/guide)

[https://docs.angularjs.org/api](https://docs.angularjs.org/api)

~~~
malux85
Another vote for this, at first Angular seems to have a lot of documentation,
but when you try and use it, you find most of it is out of date, or no longer
'the angular way'

~~~
ldng
Google could really pay for it. After all they're the copyright holders.

A lot of smaller OSS without coporate backing really need better docs.

------
chadwickthebold
This is an interesting problem, because it's not unique to technical writers.

Some suggestions: * Mozilla. [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/contribute/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/) ,
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Getting_started](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/Getting_started) Shoot them a mail and they can probably connect
her with a project to work on. MDN in particular can always use someone to
browse through the contributions and correct/improve them. They'll even
connect you with a mentor to get you started if you ask!

* Open Hatch. [http://openhatch.org/search/?q=&contribution_type=documentat...](http://openhatch.org/search/?q=&contribution_type=documentation) I've tried to use this site in the past, it's a little rough around the edges but if you're looking for single bite-sized tasks you may find them here.

Other than that, try browsing Github issue lists and seeing if there's
anything that strikes your fancy?

------
js2
The git man pages are a mess. And not easy to fix. But it is a much needed
task.

One of the challenges is that the pages are constructed from from multiple
files as an attempt to factor out the documentation of switches that are
common to multiple git commands, but I think this makes a lot of the pages
harder to read. I'd rather the man page for git log (say) document just its
unique options and then at the end say "git log also accepts any of the rev-
list options...see it for details."

------
perlgeek
The Perl 6 project is always happy about doc contributions. Currently we have
a specification, which is aimed at compiler writers:
[http://perlcabal.org/syn/](http://perlcabal.org/syn/) and then the beginning
of some user-facing documentation:
[http://doc.perl6.org/](http://doc.perl6.org/)

"Translating" specification documentation into user-facing documentation would
be very helpful. For questions, feedback and getting started, it's best to
reach the community through IRC:
[http://perl6.org/community/irc](http://perl6.org/community/irc)

------
flexd
While it may not look like it, in my opinion the uwsgi project desperately
needs documentation help.

[http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://uwsgi-
docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

There is just an endless list of features, and no clear red thread as to what
you actually need to get going.

It's hard because it just supports _everything_ for some reason.

------
shazow
I'll throw urllib3 into the hat:

[https://github.com/shazow/urllib3](https://github.com/shazow/urllib3) ->
[https://urllib3.readthedocs.org/](https://urllib3.readthedocs.org/)

There are tons of use cases and recipes littered in the Github issues and
StackOverflow answers that need to make it into the official docs. Really
there should be examples for how to do anything that another http library like
Requests documents how to do.

That said, I'd suggest your friend starts with a project she has an affinity
for. Perhaps she has used it before, or plans to use it in the future.

~~~
pyre
requests sits atop urllib3.

~~~
shazow
As the author of urllib3, this fact does not elude me.

------
RKoutnik
A great opportunity here is Bluebird, the JS promises library [0]. The current
documentation is nice, but only covers the API itself, with very few use
cases. A "getting started" guide is badly needed for newcomers to BB and
promises in general. A well-written guide would be a great star on your
friend's resume.

[0]
[https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird)

~~~
inglor
As a docs contributor, we'd love more better documentation and will entertain
pull requests improving the documentation.

------
sciurus
From what I've seen from the Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women,
the GNOME project does a good job of mentoring new volunteers. I think there
is a real need for technical writes to improve their various guides.

[https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/](https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/)

------
currysausage
The manpages for GNU utilities are usually stubs that essentially say:

    
    
      The full documentation for XY is maintained as a Texinfo  manual. If
      the info and XY programs are properly installed at your site, the command
      
              info coreutils 'XY invocation'
      
      should give you access to the complete manual.
    

(This is, btw, one of the best reasons to love the BSDs.)

This wouldn't exactly be a great training project for a technical writer since
the content is essentially there and would need to be transformed into decent
manpages. This _is_ , however, an _open source project that could use
documentation help_ , and one with unmatched popularity, so this might be
interesting for someone else who would like to acquire experience with open
source documentation while doing something that lots of sysadmins will
appreciate.

~~~
pixelbeat
Note newer versions of coreutils will have links in the man pages directly to
online manuals through
[http://www.gnu.org/s/coreutils/ls](http://www.gnu.org/s/coreutils/ls) etc.

BTW the coreutils man pages are a subset of the full manual, and I think that
adding more information to man pages can make things harder to find.

The thinking at present is that linking directly to a web page for the full
manual is what most users would prefer.

------
collyw
Respect for taking on some of the less desirable work in the technical world.

------
EmanueleAina
Depending on the type of documentation you want to write GNOME has plenty of
options. Join the Documentation Project team and you can choose to work on
user manuals, code tutorials, API docs for all the libraries in the stack
(also used by EvolveOS, ElementaryOS, Cinnamon, XFCE, MATE) or even on the
Human Interface Guidelines:

[https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/](https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/)

[https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Contributing](https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Contributing)

Documentation is a sore point for the majority of FOSS projects, just pick the
one you like most and I'm sure they will be happy to have someone willing to
help. :)

------
donniezazen
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_Docs_Project](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_Docs_Project)

------
important
You can check out the Apache open source projects , they list the
documentation requirement as a JIRA bug.

Apache NLP which needs documentation
[https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project+%3D+OPENN...](https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project+%3D+OPENNLP+AND+resolution+%3D+Unresolved+AND+issuetype+%3D+Documentation+ORDER+BY+priority+DESC)

UN Online Volunteering This is on the social contribution side ,may not be
your choice , but its good to know.
[https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/vol/opportunity_search...](https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/vol/opportunity_search/?typ=8)

------
alex_duf
MDN : [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/) All the new webrtc api need a refresh on their documentation.

I'm sure there's other parts that needs to be updated.

This is the collaborative bible for web developers, think of it as a wikipedia
for the web apis.

(edit : I'm saying that in case you or your friend does not know that already)

There's also yunohost here : [https://yunohost.org](https://yunohost.org) that
would need some documentation.

------
baudehlo
The biggest problem with this question is that to write good documentation for
a project you need to really understand that project.

So I would honestly suggest your friend takes on something open source that
he/she knows really well already, and is interested in taking a deep dive
into.

There's not an open source project on the planet that would turn away better
documentation, so it really doesn't matter what you choose. But choose
something your friend CAN improve, with knowledge and understanding of how it
works.

------
tdicola
I'm not affiliated with the project, but I've used openFrameworks
([http://www.openframeworks.cc/](http://www.openframeworks.cc/)) and really
liked the library but found the documentation is pretty lacking. It's
basically just an API reference and a few small programming guides. Even as an
experienced developer I still found myself stumbling over how basic things
worked because the documentation didn't really give any guidance.

------
fergiwon
If the goal is to gain more experience your friend should look for projects
that appeal to them or are in an area they wish to gain experience in. For
example, if they want to do code-level work, find a dev library - if they want
to do user-level work find that. Also, some of the more established doc
projects might be better to learn from than a project that has no docs - like
the gnome docs team, etc.

------
obulpathi
I am working on a project called openstack-poppy For information about poppy:
[https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Poppy](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Poppy)
[https://poppy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://poppy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)
If you would like to contribute, please let me know.

------
chipx86
We're always looking for someone to help improve our documentation over at
Review Board ([https://www.reviewboard.org/](https://www.reviewboard.org/)).

As our support for third-party extensions grows, we're especially interested
in writing a series of guides to help extension authors, as well as those
using our API to do interesting things.

------
marinaz
Your friend might like to check out what documentation projects are available
for the next round of the Outreach Program for Women internships.

[https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/2014/December...](https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/2014/DecemberMarch#Participating_Organizations)

------
phillipuniverse
BroadleafCommerce at
[http://www.broadleafcommerce.com/docs](http://www.broadleafcommerce.com/docs).
Pull requests/changes are at
[https://github.com/BroadleafCommerce/docs](https://github.com/BroadleafCommerce/docs)

------
ibisum
MOAI - its a fantastic framework for all kinds of things, but it always needs
more documentation: [http://getmoai.com/](http://getmoai.com/)

I'm willing to help you learn the framework so you can write the docs.

------
skreuzer
Come join the FreeBSD documentation team and help improve what is already
considered world class documentation

[https://www.freebsd.org/docproj/](https://www.freebsd.org/docproj/)

~~~
justincormack
Its far too good to need help. Clearly they want to show a before after
comparison...

------
lPrentice
Erlang could definitely use help by putting libraries into context and more
user-friendly documentation of library functions.

The Erlang community has done a great job so far as it goes, but still needs
help.

------
xvilka
Radare2 project needs good documentation too
[http://rada.re/y/?p=documentation](http://rada.re/y/?p=documentation)

------
stuaxo
Shoebot, a python based creative coding tool could really do with better docs.

(Disclaimer, I am the leäd developer for the last few years)....

[edit] Come find us at shoebot.net [/edit]

~~~
akbarnama
Clickable - [http://www.shoebot.net](http://www.shoebot.net)

------
T-A
This has been begging for bids for a while now:
[https://worklist.net/19870](https://worklist.net/19870)

------
aktungmak
nimrod could really use better documentation... I am trying to get into it but
unless you want to dig through the stdlib its quite hard to get up and running
with a _real_ project... esp GUI based

~~~
aktungmak
its a shame, because it is a really great language

------
sergiotapia
The select2 library could use some lovin' with actual examples:
[http://ivaynberg.github.io/select2/](http://ivaynberg.github.io/select2/)

------
npsimons
Just start reading manual pages; I've come across quite a few grammar errors
that could use cleaning up, I just haven't had the time.

------
larssorenson
OpenSSL

------
devonbleak
OpenStack.

------
J_Darnley
Every project could use better docs.

Everyone, including your friend, should contribute to one they know how to
use. If you don't know how to use it how are you going to write docs for it?

