As you can see, we now have a separate forum for discussions about documentation. I think it's useful to think of the documentation as another main componenent of the whole BOINC system.

We can use this to plan and debate both the official documentation and any unofficial add-ons (eg. the wiki, the FAQ, the team sites).

So where do we start?

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I think it's useful to think of the documentation as another main componenent of the whole BOINC system.

I agree, there any many sub-features of BOINC as a whole which are under-represented; such as the critically important web development side of things, especially front-end code development.

We can use this to plan and debate both the official documentation and any unofficial add-ons (eg. the wiki, the FAQ, the team sites).

So where do we start?

As with any good planning;

• Begin with who the target audience(es) is/are, and their needs.
  
• Clearly defined/specified purpose of the site/project.
  
• Goals that the site/project is going to achieve.
  
• A general/basic idea of how those goals are going to be achieved - this is in the relm of big-picture features, such as using a wiki (but not calling it a wiki on the site; "Knowledge Base" is more appropriate)
  
• Start gathering general ideas for content; in this case I assume things like;
  
  
  
  • Information about BOINC, what it is, what it does etc.
    
  • How to install & use BOINC.
    

  
  

• Start defining an information architecture, how all the various elements of the content are going to fit together; such as what sections are you going to have?
  
• Establish content authoring guidelines for quality ausurance
  
• Ideally have certain authors responsible for distinct areas, so that there's at least one person with a good overview of a section in order to maintain content as a coherient whole, rather than just odd pages stuck together - by this I mean the inter-linking of pages should make sense, and things should follow-on from each other.
  

I think that's enough to start with.

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