I think Wikis are the best technology to create a community-driven documentation project. See Arch Linux and (in the past) Gentoo.
I chose Dokuwiki instead of mediawiki for my own documentation site, because it has better syntax elements for producing good documentation, it has a good visual editor out of the box, it has a proper ACL structure (whereas mediawiki is an "everybody is equal" wiki) and can be expanded with plugins and skins.

I do not think we will ever see a new version of the SlackBook, considering what I said in my previous post (without dedication and group interaction, progress will come to a halt) so a real community documentation project would be very welcome. The SlackWiki is not getting all that much attention (look at how the slackwiki.org domain expired) and I put more time into my blog than into my Wiki. A few "moderators" will have to step up and construct a Wiki page framework - perhaps using the chapter structure of the SlackBook and extending that. I would certainly transfer some of my documentation (and create new pages) to such a Wiki if I trusted that the moderator team was dedicated has fresh ideas.

Eric

The only problem with a wiki is that it's a bit ugly, to be honest. Of course, "les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas" (meaning you don't discuss taste and color), but imagine this: visit SlackBuilds.org, go to the "Repository" page. Imagine a similar site "SlackDocs.org". Imagine you are facing the task of setting up some centralized authentication for a SOHO network... so you would simply click on the "Networking" section and look for the documentation about said subject. It would be a no-frills, more or less laconic documentation in cooking receipt style. Maybe with a nice sober style sheet, but not too fancy. More important, the article you stumble upon would be approved for the version of Slackware you are running, so if you duly follow the receipt, it's going to JustWork(tm).

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deleted.

My favourite Linus Torvalds quote, as an inspiration. I got it printed out and pinned it over my work desk, right next to the UNIX - LIVE FREE OR DIE plate:

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I also would like to assist. My English skills aren't super. But a got a lot of experience with the hardware side of pc's and servers.

What would be preferred, built on one of the existing sources slackwiki or the slackware wiki at LQ or start from scratch.

I think a good use for a wiki would not be a collection of random howtos (that's already what SlackWiki is), but an actual book along the lines of The Slackbook or SlackBasics. I would even suggest actually starting from the SlackBasics book; it's GPL-licensed, so the legalities shouldn't be a problem.

In my humble opinion, the first thing to do here would be to host a mailing list somewhere, something like slackdocs@example.org, and then everyboy who's interested join this list.

Next step would be to discuss fundamental questions like the one above. I think AlienBob is specifically right about one point: first, you need the Vision. Like "how is it going to be when it's finished?" So the first thing to do is discussing the Vision thing: how, where, how many, ... I know the usual approach is "OK, I'm gonna put this piece of information online and share it with others, and then we'll see, maybe others will join in, and who knows, after a while it's going to be a complete documentation". I know this manner of working (for practicing it also), but I think another approach is needed here. I like to take the SlackBuilds.org folks as an example, because they got their act together and made "nails with heads". Before SlackBuilds.org, there were just a few homebrew sites scattered over the web, some of them very good actually (AlienBob, slacky.it, slackware-fr, etc.) but now everything is really in one place, in a very appealing and sober presentation.

I think you can even have the best of both worlds. Start the site out with a "skeleton", an abstract. Then folks will fill in the sections gradually, in no particular order, until pretty much everything is fleshed out.

Yeah, a well thought over skeleton/structure would go first and then over time people would populate particular sections.

This is a great Idea, I was trying to think out something similar for a while (Even bought a domain slacknotes.org). But your ideas go way further than that. So if possible, an attempt to create slackdocs.org should be made.

I really like the ideas of keeping version specific documentation and Eric's idea about contributors responsibility to update their documentation when/if necessary.

I would certainly contribute few documents in that fashion.

EDIT
Just some thoughts about wiki stuff. While wiki engines really seem like a comfortable means to write, store and maintain information, they can also be very discouraging for a slacking users to start using them. Since you have to learn a syntax and that alone for a slacking user like me it's often a deciding factor not to write document. Plus different syntax for different wiki engines does not really help.

Also I do not like to search them (Arch Wiki being one shining exception), because of the reasons already mentioned here, like hitting an empty first page without useful navigation. It's not a problem when you know what you search for, but there are quite some times when you don't. There for as a user, I would certainly prefer clean documentation site with simple navigation over wiki stuff where you can't find anything without having to use search.

A solution might be to contribute documents in odf (since there would be administrating team, which could adapt them to a site format). There might be even better ideas I'm sure. But the fact is, if you want contributions, you have to make it simple for people to do, because in this material era, we value things which are scarce and time is one of them. Wild nature should be the other one with very high value, but I some times wonder if it actually is, but thats another topic, sorry. Anyway, is there any ideas on how to make contributions as simple and as little time consuming as possible?

Maybe it's just silly, but this was the sort of thing I was contemplating. Would it not be possible to copy the information from the beta Slackbook into a wiki and then open it up to the community to keep up to date? Perhaps, as mentioned before, updates should be moderated, but how better to bring the Slackbook current than to make it into a wiki?

I do think that Kiki's idea about having a documentation browser is a good idea, but it could even be a separate project from the actual documentation, which could be supplied in some sort of standard formatting easily manipulated for display in different styles. (OK, I don't actually know how possible that is, but the idea seems to have merit, non? So, there could be a wiki, an online browser and perhaps even a local SlackDocs program - or something - all referencing the same data. Or, maybe I'm just nuts.)

In any case, as much as I - and certainly others - appreciate the effort Alan Hicks has put into the Slackbook, I don't think we should rely on that as our 'official' documentation. If, in the future, someone wants to put out a Slackware book - like Kiki has done with his tome, then it's a great opportunity for them! But we should have some evolving source of accurate documentation that we can easily access, if any at all. So, let's do it, or drop it!

As I said in the other threads about the Slackbook which surfaced recently, I will lend my support in whatever way I can.

Here's an earlier thread in which a book-style wiki was brought up:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-2009-a-735819

The TOC for this project had better be more well thought out than this prior attempt:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Slackersbible

Honestly, yes, I think you are.

(And just of of curiosity, what was your first language? It's clearly not English. For one thing, it's "casualness", not "casualty"; a "casualty" is someone who was hurt or killed in a war).

I'd say more, but I'm not confident that I understand what you're saying.

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+1 for an archlinux style wiki

-1 to a odf/pdf/doc style one

The Arch wiki is easily navigated in console browsers links and lynx. It looks great in lynx too! When viewed from within Firefox it is clean and consistent, elegant in its simplicity.

Absolutely perfect for Slackware.

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