--- title: 'YARD Sale: Documenting Clearance' teaser: tags: web,clearance,rails,open source author: Dan Croak published_on: 2009-08-17 --- We've [previously stated](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/post/159805485/documentation-demolition-derby) our commitment to [rdoc.info](http://rdoc.info) as the official documentation home of our open source projects. Add [the documentation for Clearance](http://rdoc.info/projects/thoughtbot/clearance) to that list. [![Clearance documentation](http://s3.amazonaws.com/thoughtbot-training/images/clearance_documentation.png)](http://rdoc.info/projects/thoughtbot/clearance) ## Why Blog posts and wikis are good for tutorials, not for API documentation. YARD is awesome. Take five minutes to scan the [Getting Started](http://yard.soen.ca/getting_started) page. ![World](http://s3.amazonaws.com/thoughtbot-training/images/worlds_longest_yard_sale.png) rdoc.info is [open source](http://github.com/zapnap/rdocinfo). I'm happy to outsource documentation generation and serving like any other service such as source code hosting or error notification tracking. ## Positive side effect: visibility The process of documenting with YARD made me think harder about public/private visibility. I was surprised that documentation could be a *design tool*. Looking at the public API, I noticed how many methods are required to handle the [remember me](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/post/164115286/remember-me) as a "feature". If we go to a GitHub/Tumblr model, the API will be simpler and the implementation cleaner. Visit our [Open Source page](https://thoughtbot.com/open-source) to learn more about our team's contributions.