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Still a bit rough and looking for some feedback, but something I thought important to document

Could be its own entire page as well if we want to expand a bit further even, the paragraphs are a bit lengthy so might be best, and it might not be in the right place I'm not entirely sure where it would be best placed

@AThousandShips AThousandShips requested a review from a team October 22, 2025 11:08
@AThousandShips AThousandShips added the enhancement New feature or request label Oct 22, 2025
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@Ivorforce Ivorforce left a comment

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This could use a comment about what to do in this situation.

I'm thinking about something like this:

  • User experiments finds some strange behavior
  • User tries to document it
  • Area maintainer is notified, regards the behavior as bug
  • Maintainer fixes the bug
  • Documentation PR is changed to document the new, intended behavior.

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Realized I forgot a note that I was going to add, something like "If you are uncertain, please ask the relevant team"

Note that this is more for things like "after creating a node X is in Y state" or "drawing two things in a row has X effect", as opposed to not documenting bugs, though that is important too

@AThousandShips AThousandShips force-pushed the to_document_or_not_to_document branch from 6d07299 to 8752241 Compare November 21, 2025 15:15
@AThousandShips AThousandShips marked this pull request as ready for review November 21, 2025 15:16
@AThousandShips AThousandShips changed the title [WIP][Documentation] Add information on what not to document [Documentation] Add information on what not to document Nov 21, 2025
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I think the new section is great, but it's a little too long for my taste.

I tried to juggle the information around a bit, and I think i've arrived at something that brings the same message across, but uses less words.
Ultimately it's a matter of taste though, so feel free to adapt my suggestions in a way that feels right to you!

Comment on lines +62 to +63
Finally, it's also important to know what *not* to document. There are some cases
where things should be left out of the documentation to avoid causing problems.
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@Ivorforce Ivorforce Nov 23, 2025

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I think it would be good to get the actionable stuff out of the way first. Explanations can follow later, for those interested.

Suggested change
Finally, it's also important to know what *not* to document. There are some cases
where things should be left out of the documentation to avoid causing problems.
Finally, it's also important to know what *not* to document. There are some cases
where things should be left out of the documentation to avoid causing problems.
In short, do not document something in the following cases:
- The behaviour is a bug. In that case, please [report the bug](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues) instead.
- The behaviour is not intended (also called an "implementation detail").

Comment on lines +64 to +74
Some behaviors or details of how some part of the engine works might be unintentional,
unknown to the maintainers, or be an implementation detail rather than part of the
real goal of that feature. This means that these details might change when bugs are
fixed or new features are added, as they are not part of the intended behavior or
goal of the feature. Documenting them would risk making people rely on things
that might change in the future if maintainers are not aware that this has been
documented.

Anything that is documented is also generally considered part of the official API.
This means that changing it could be considered breaking compatibility. This risks
limiting what changes can be done even when necessary.
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Given the above, I think this could be shortened:

Suggested change
Some behaviors or details of how some part of the engine works might be unintentional,
unknown to the maintainers, or be an implementation detail rather than part of the
real goal of that feature. This means that these details might change when bugs are
fixed or new features are added, as they are not part of the intended behavior or
goal of the feature. Documenting them would risk making people rely on things
that might change in the future if maintainers are not aware that this has been
documented.
Anything that is documented is also generally considered part of the official API.
This means that changing it could be considered breaking compatibility. This risks
limiting what changes can be done even when necessary.
To understand why we don't want to document unintended behavior, please consider that anything that is documented could be considered part of the official API.
This means that documenting unintended behavior could risk making people rely on things
that need to be changed in the future, limiting what we can change without breaking compatibility.

Comment on lines +76 to +79
This means that the documentation team should make sure that area maintainers review
documentation PRs that add previously undocumented behavior, and that area maintainers
should review the documentation of PRs adding new features, to make sure that internal
details are not documented.
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Suggested change
This means that the documentation team should make sure that area maintainers review
documentation PRs that add previously undocumented behavior, and that area maintainers
should review the documentation of PRs adding new features, to make sure that internal
details are not documented.
To avoid accidentally documenting unintended behavior, :ref:`area maintainers <doc_areas>` should always review changes to their respective area's documentation. Facilitating this is the responsibility of the documentation team.

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