<div>User contributions are what is needed to improve the documentation.</div><div><br></div><div> 1. It should be *easy* to report spelling errors and/or complaints </div><div> about a particular page.</div><div>
<br></div><div> 2. There should be a discussion section on the bottom of each page.</div><div><br></div><div>Solving 2) is easier than one might think. Disqus is a site that</div><div>hosts discussion threads. A thread is is embedded into a page</div>
<div>with a piece of with JavaScript. When the page is loaded the</div><div>comments are fetched in the background. Each discussion thread </div><div>gets its own id. This means that even though the documentation are </div>
<div>generated and stored locally the same thread is loaded and shown for</div><div>everyone. ( <a href="http://docs.disqus.com/help/14/">http://docs.disqus.com/help/14/</a> )</div><div>It also means that is possible to associate a discussion thread</div>
<div>to, say, each page or function, and to keep the dicussion thread </div><div>in the event the documentation is rearranged.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><div>Why are user contributions needed? Well, Danny's Reddit example show</div>
<div>valuable user feedback is lost. Perhaps not from the mailing list</div><div>regulars but from the more casual users.</div><div><br></div><div>The redditor in question complained about the lack of examples</div><div>in the Racket documentation, and only after prodding revealed</div>
<div>it was the embedding section he based his opinion on.</div><div>Finding such weak spots are difficult with some *easy* way</div><div>for users to leave feedback.</div><div><br></div><div>I saw the discussion on Reddit too.For those that didn't someone </div>
<div>didn't like the Racket documentation. It lacked examples, he said. </div><div>After some prodding it was revealed that it was the section on </div><div>embedding in particular he didn't like.</div><div><br></div>
<div>Lately I have read the jQuery (a JavaScript library) documentation. </div><div><br></div><div>Each function gets its own page. On every(!) page below the main text </div><div>they have a small paragraph reminding people to ask question on the </div>
<div>mailing list and/or irc. Then comes a Disqus discussion and comments </div><div>sections, where users can discussion the </div><div><br></div><div>See <a href="http://api.jquery.com/css/">http://api.jquery.com/css/</a> for a concrete example.</div>
<div>Note the proportion of examples. It is interesting to see </div><div>that such a page has 58 (!) comments.</div><div><br></div><div>Now since Racket has a mind-boggling number of functions,</div><div>I am not suggesting that this style should be adapted, but</div>
<div>adding a discussion section would be a good move.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Back to the guy on Reddit. He had a bad experience with</div><div>the documentation, but (presumably) never reported it.</div>
<div>Maybe he would "Report a bug" link on each page</div><div>encourage more feedback?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>-- </div><div>Jens Axel Søgaard</div><div><br></div>