This is an excellent paper... I wanted to share with you all. http://blog.ninlabs.com/2012/05/crowd-documentation/
Quite a find for its relevance to OpenStack APIs! They studied Android, GWT, and the Java programming language. In their words "a large established API, a new and specialized API, and a less active API. The questions they studied: RQ1. Can we rely on the crowd to discuss an entire API on Stack OverFlow? (not the entire but a good portion) RQ1.1 Are APIs widely covered? RQ1.2 What is discussed and what is not dis- cussed? Are those API elements infre- quently discussed also infrequently used in practice? RQ1.3 How fast is the crowd at covering an entire API? RQ2. What are the dynamics of a successful API community on Stack OverFlow? RQ2.1 Who contributes? RQ2.2 How does the crowd contribute? RQ2.3 How many code samples does the crowd provide? Conclusion: We have shown several sources of evidence that crowd documentation exists as a viable process that can emerge from social media sites, such as Stack OverFlow, for creating software documentation. Documentation can emerge in the form of questions and answers that feature many code examples and discussions about using API classes and meth- ods. The authors that contribute these items take distinct roles in curating and maintaining the quality of questions and answers. I don't have other conclusions for OpenStack APIs but want to study their paper further and the tool they made. This is highly relevant research though. Anne -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack-doc-core Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack-doc-core More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
