I guess the main problem is not so much the form or the content but rather the commitment. Writing a good documentation is hard work and with a project as this it is pretty much endless and allready huge. Here is for example a very
incomplete list of some of the mods made for Minetest. Feel free to add information. I presume though with a developing software such as Minetest happily is such a list could never offer all the information a player really needs. Very important for example would be to know for each mod for what Minetest version exactly the mod still works. Happy testing.
The Mod
Database is allready a pretty good start but it lacks contributers that add the hundreds of mods that exist and test them and describe them and take pics and ...
Besides that it wants the mod-makers to manually update any changes such as download links for new versions. For it to really work the Mod-Database probably expects to much work from modders that work with rolling releases for example.
I personally think the wiki at
http://wiki.minetest.net is the best place to gather information and links for the usuall player, just as the
http://dev.minetest.net is for those wanting to start developing. I don't say they are perfect yet but we still have to find the knowledgable writer with ambition, time, commitment and good style to help us out. Once the basic information is complete things like this "
Beginners Guide to Modding" should be a lot easier to put together. Maybe the dev-wiki could use a better category system or rather at least make full use of it.
There still seems to be some work ongoing for a single or double A4/letter size cheatpage for the basic things to know when playing Minetest but it hasn't been presented yet.
(poke-poke-at-hoodedice)Interestingly the Minetest download does contain
a doc folder with usefull content. It might not be that reader friendly but the irritating thing is people asking for documentation are often fully unaware of its existence. I guess this can only be helped (a little at least) with a nice help page within the running program that offers information on where to locate help. Although if this includes hand copying long path addresses most will probably not bother and rather ask for links in the forums or IRC. People are used to having information just one click away.
As Sokomine mentioned Cornernote once wrote a script that extracts information and puts it into
a wiki of sorts:
cornernote wrote:Game Wiki for MinetestDescriptionExtracts all in-game items which can then be viewed on a website.
Server admins may want to make this website public so that players can learn more about the world.
It works as follows:
- install (see the README.txt)
- load your game, which dumps all the items to JSON encoded strings inside wikidata/
- load import.php in a browser to import the JSON data into SQLite3
- optionally recompile minetest to extract cubeimages
- that's all, now you can browse your own Minetest GameWiki!
Though alone not that pretty it may serve well as a base to start a documentation from. Sadly you have to do some work yourself to have this thing work, so no one-click-solution.
By the way I think the same of any other automatic systems I have yet seen. They might generate some basic info but it usually needs some write up to be comprehensible and usefull for the common newbie who would be the average customer searching for help and above all guidance.
eh - too much text - no one is gonna read this - just like the allready existing docs