Put docstrings on special methods?

I'm trying to decide what information to put in the class docstring and what t开发者_如何学运维o put in the __init__ method docstring. Up until now I've been putting an overview of the class and how to work with it in the class docstring, while stuff directly related to initialization (argument details etc.) I put in the __init__ docstring.

Today I started wondering if this was the right way of doing it, so I looked at a couple of built-in modules, and I see that the __init__ method almost never has a docstring. According to PEP8, "Docstrings are not necessary for non-public methods", but isn't __init__ public?

In the same vein, what about other special methods, like __getitem__, __getattr__ or __new__, should they have docstrings? Or should I just mention the consequences they have in the class docstring?

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Straight from PEP 257:

Public methods (including the __init__ constructor) should also have docstrings.

[...]

The class constructor should be documented in the docstring for its __init__ method.