Docathon

What's a docathon?

It's kind of like a hackathon, but focused on developing material and tools for documentation. Hackers of all skill-levels are welcome. The docathon will be held in late February, 2017, stay tuned for more details on dates. It will hopefully be the first of many docathons to come!

Why a docathon?

Everybody knows how important documentation is. However, as important as it is, we often don't give documentation enough attention. Docstrings are incomplete or missing argument explanations, examples don't compile or reveal outdated APIs, tutorials are often idiosynchratic (or not even there). The docathon is about changing that.

How Do I Join In?

All you need is a project to work on that isn't your regular day job. We recommend you choose something open, perhaps on GitHub or Bitbucket, so that others can see your progress. In the coming weeks we'll send out a formal call for ideas and projects, and you can sign up then either as a project host or as a contributor.

About

The Docathon team believes that coding is inherently part human, part machine. We spend a lot of time trying to perfect the machine half of that equation, often at the detriment of the human half. The Docathon is a place where we remember that ultimately, the tools we write will be used by other people, and it's crucial that those people are able to understand and utilize these tools effectively.

Currently, the Docathon organizing team is composed of several members at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. In particular, below is our core organizing team:

If you'd like to get involved in organizing, shoot us an email or open an issue on our repository.