Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation

Craig Dunn

July 21st, 20160 0

Xamarin and Microsoft are excited to be a part of the launch of Stack Overflow Documentation. This new feature brings the same collaborative approach from Stack Overflow’s question-and-answer system to developer documentation.

Stack Overflow Documentation provides a set of edit and review tools that lets the community write example-focused documentation to complement our existing developer portal and samples at developer.xamarin.com. Stack Overflow badges and reputation are supported, so every contribution you make is recognized; the more docs you contribute, the more rep you earn!

How does it work?

The new site will be organized by Stack Overflow tags (such as Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android) which will contain documentation topics with many examples.

Browsing the documentation is as easy as using Stack Overflow: you can navigate by tag, topic, or search. If you can’t find the documentation you’re looking for, suggest someone write it (or if you know about a particular subject, write it yourself).

How to Contribute

Stack Overflow users can:

Suggest topics that they would like to see documented, for others to write.
Create a topic they are knowledgeable on, and immediately add examples.
Add examples to existing topics.

Each topic can have a number of examples to demonstrate how to accomplish different tasks. Examples can have the following four elements:

Examples: Topics should always include working code examples.
Syntax: Add method signatures if they aren’t obvious.
Parameters: Explain what parameters are for and any constraints they must adhere to.
Remarks: Describe any additional rules or pitfalls that aren’t covered in the code examples.

Submissions will be peer-reviewed; the site includes the ability to share drafts and chat with other contributors before an example is published.