Volunteer: Difference between revisions

The FlightGear project is looking for people who are willing to help maintain the FAQ (which is quite out of date). If you you would like to get involved, please subscribe to the FlightGear Developers [[mailing list]] in order to discuss the details or simply start editing the [[FAQ|wiki FAQ]].

=== Improve the wiki ===

You can easily [http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&type=signup register an account] and help [[Portal:Wiki|improve the wiki]], for example by editing existing articles or [[Help:Your first article|creating new ones]]. Also, many articles could be greatly improved just by adding a handful of relevant screenshots for illustration purposes. Proof reading existing articles is also greatly appreciated.  

Registering takes less than 10 seconds, so what let's you? After registration, you'll have to confirm your registration by clicking on the link sent to you by email.

=== Review wiki articles ===

Over time, wiki articles can become [[:Category:Out of date|outdated]], or may simply need to be reviewed and improved for other reasons - your help in reviewing existing articles would be highly appreciated!

 

=== Translate the Wiki ===

You can also help localize the Wiki by translating important articles into different languages.

Please see [[translation requests]].

=== HowTo Writers ===

Various parts of FlightGear are currently not yet sufficiently documented, also available documentation is often not really suitable to be used by non-developers. This results in users being unaware of the wide range of features and possibilities that FlightGear supports already.  

As "HowTo writer" you should be able to document your own experiences with FlightGear in a clear and concise style, so that others can easily follow your instructions on order to make use of FlightGear's less known features. HowTo guides do not need to be very comprehensive, they shall only serve the purpose of providing users with easy to follow instructions about how to set up their version of FlightGear.  

Adding screenshots to articles is another excellent way for improving the existing documentation.

Topics that could use some HowTos are listed in [[Article requests]].

As already stated on the Wiki main page, FlightGear comes with a set of illustrated documentation, notably "The Manual". This piece of documentation aims at being printed onto paper and being read as a reference while you're exploring FlightGear - or simply taken with you on a long trip. If you are a skilled writer and a little bit familiar with LaTex, please take the time to dig into the [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/getstart.pdf PDF] or [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/getstart/ HTML] version. Instructions on how to get the source code are [http://www.gitorious.org/fg/getstart/ here].

 

 

Currently, some of the other documentation that comes with FlightGear is lacking, terse or simply inaccurate (outdated) in various places due to the advances in FlightGear's code since the time when the original documentation was written.  

 

As a documentation editor/reviewer, it would be your task to check the current documentation and identify areas for improvement. Preferably you should also be able to directly make corresponding suggestions for augmentations, or even write new help documents altogether (possibly based on evaluating recent mailing list discussions). You would be expected to thoroughly check the documentation folder ([[$FG ROOT]]/Docs) and review all relevant documentation for obvious shortcomings or mistakes, smaller corrections shall be sent by email to the developer mailing list, preferably in unified diff format (for patch to work).  

Alternatively, small text files can also be sent directly to the mailing list, more complex modifications should be only made available by uploading them to a webpage and linking to the corresponding files from your emails. If you are not now familiar with the process of creating unified diff patches, but would like to make it easier for the developers to work with your changes, please consider trying [http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/ KDiff3], a GUI frontend to the diff and patch utilities that works on several platforms (also Windows).

If you intend to redo a major part of the current documentation, it is recommended that you first discuss this with the developers, to ensure that you do not end up documenting code that may also be subject to major changes or even removal altogether. Please contact the developers before launching into a major documentation effort.