The TeX community has an english FAQ, a german FAQ, a wikibook (translated into multiple languages) and several other places where Information (of any quality) is stored.
Advantage here on the SE-network: shiny badges, reputation for participating, which is a motivator.
Ok, nice, cuople of general things though.
High reputation does not mean high knowledge of a specific topic. What about robo reviews?
Often documentation is lacking in examples, or the examples are trivial and don't demonstrate typical use.
This is from the initial question. Agreed, either examples are non-existent or hard for a starter to process/understand. But doesn't that mean we need examples instead of documentation?
Active members of the community could make up examples of the often requested stuff, mail it to package authors and ask them to include the examples in the doc. Sanity check included. Sanity check missing here on the network (i.e. acceptible review).
- Who choses how to document a topic?
For example, let's assume the topic of page headers and footers? We have fancyhdr
, we have titleps
and we have scrlayer-scrpage
in general use. All packages work with the standard classes. The first two are not recommended with KOMA-script. memoir
has stuff implemented, no package needed. How to document that on a website (here, wiki, faq, whereever) without confusing a beginner? And we are talking about beginners here.
I have seen so many bad advice (probably given quite a bit myself) in forum posts, blog-posts, wikibook and others, that i am scared, that instead of helping it creates another source of confusion.
Remember: You cannot just delete stuff from the internet once it is written. There will be proof somewhere, that i am a penguin.
TikZ
and I don't understand how anyone can have the time to so meticulously document everything. – gerrit Sep 9 '15 at 15:59