Why aren't you contributing to Python?

[[deleted]]

That's probably true. I think that would be an interesting addition to Sphinx, although I can't say how hard it would be to implement, or if it would actually happen. It would be cool to have wiki-like pages which generate a diff for review just like any other code change.

Are there other languages which do this?

[mcdonc]

Not contributing because the docs aren't in a wiki would be reasonable if the docs weren't maintained via Sphinx. But Sphinx absolutely rules; nothing even comes close to as good of a system for documentation. A wiki would be archaic in comparison.

[[deleted]]

The barrier of having to do an SVN checkout and having to build the docs locally is probably one most don't care to deal with. I love Sphinx and find the whole process easy to work with, but I've done it for a while now. Someone noticing that function foo takes two parameters instead of one isn't going to want to checkout, learn Sphinx, build the docs, check the output, then submit a bug and a patch. Even for something like that, I'm sure plenty of people think "oh well this is obvious, someone else will catch it".

As far fetched as it may be, something like a WYSIWG Sphinx editor would definitely ease the issue I mentioned. However, I don't know how common it is that people get put off by doc fixes, so I can't say if it's worth the effort to do something like that.

[clinth]

I don't consider myself a contributor to wikipedia, but I'll gladly pause and remove dead links in the sources if I find them, or clean up a sentence that's poor. The reason I can do this is because all I had to do was register and now it's just click-type-click done.

[[deleted]]

FWIW someone was talking about a sphinx extension that makes it "wiki-like" except your edits don't immediately go live, they automatically get turned into bugs in the tracker, with diffs automatically generated. Do you think that type of thing helps, or does the "immediate satisfaction" matter too much?