Writing Open Source Documentation? 92
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm an Open Source guy that runs Linux, and suggests Firefox and OpenOffice to friends. Now, I'd like to give back, but the problem is that I'm not a coder. So, how do I go about writing documentation, and what kind of projects should I look into? What are some stellar examples?"
Anwyhere you like (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun has published a pretty good book called Read Me First! - A style guide for the computer industry [amazon.com]. Covers "writing styles", legal guidelines, writing for an international audience, types of techical documents, and so on. Recommended. For a fun example of how NOT to write, read this page [wikibooks.org] and see if you can figure out which sentences refer to the "old" bad way to do animations, and which sentences refer the new recommended way (the rest of the tutorial is pretty good though, and I really appreciate the time and effort people have spent on it - I just wish someone who knows more than me about Blender could rewrite that particular section.)
Which project to contribute to - well, you had three good examples there. Just pick any project you are passionate about and comfortable using, try to think about what documentation you would have found handy when you was learning to use it. Start writing that.
Re:Uhhh.. just do it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider posting a checklist (Score:2, Interesting)