BOINC Wiki

Paul. D. Buck (original author of most of the Unofficial BOINC Wiki) commented that much of the BOINC documentation is fragmented, scattered over numerous sites with different authors. This is true. As with many open source projects, BOINC documentation (especially user documentation) is given a low priority.

Here is a brief summary of the best of the BOINC documentation:

Official BOINC Wiki (Trac)
 - up to date but incomplete developer documentation
 - project developer/admin documentation
 - up to date but very limited user documentation
 - very limited error and troubleshooting documentation

Unofficial BOINC Wiki (UBW)
 - outdated but wide ranging user documentation
 - project-specific documentation
 - very outdated error documentation

BOINC FAQ Service
 - multiple languages
 - comprehensive collection of common problems

Nicolas and Didactylos agree that the BOINC user and support documentation should ideally exist on the official BOINC website.  Suggestions for achieving this include:
 a) making UBW an official BOINC resource, and concentrating efforts on updating it.
 b) creating a separate wiki on the BOINC site for user-facing documentation, and migrating information to it from UBW and Trac. Trac would keep developer and project admin documentation only.
 c) distinguishing the user documentation within Trac, making it more accessible and migrating information to it from UBW.

We also agree that developer documentation in UBW should be migrated to Trac (most of it is outdated and can simply be deleted).

There are also various options for the future of UBW.
 1. Make it official, as in (a) above. The big problem here is that we don't believe an official BOINC wiki should include detailed project-specific information.
 2. Make it a semi-official repository ONLY for project-specific information. Large projects may have their own wikis, but UBW could serve as a permanent home for smaller projects to keep documentation.

No matter which path we go down, we need more and better documentation. We need your help to decide which option is best, and then write the documentation.

Regards

Nicolas Alvarez and David Barnard