I just commented on Geoffrey Grosenbach’s post regarding the efforts of folks to improve Rails’ documentation. Here’s my idea:

“http://api.rubyonrails.org should be the de facto documentation and to get my doc patches accepted would be a great personal achievement.

It would be a little more worthwhile is if it is measured and evaluated. http://api.rubyonrails.org could have Digg-style thumbs-up, thumbs-down buttons next to each doc section. Those ratings would give the community feedback about which areas of the docs currently need the most love. They would also be compared against the authors of those docs.

A simple “leaderboard” list of most-valued documenters would be great motivation. A consortium of Rails consultancies such as thoughtbot, Planet Argon, Elevated Rails, etc. would reward the top documenters on a monthly basis.”

I think there also needs to be something in the workflow that makes the job of Marcel Molina or other “doc patch acceptors” a little easier.