Coding convention of function header comments

Hi:

Sorry maybe this is not the best place to ask, but recently I need to come up with coding conventions regarding function header comments which explain the usage of functions (meaning of parameters, etc). <linux/list.h> has sth like this:

/**
* list_add - add a new entry
* @new: new entry to be added
* @head: list head to add it after
*
* Insert a new entry after the specified head.
* This is good for implementing stacks.
*/
static __inline__ void list_add(struct list_head *new, struct list_head *head)
{
__list_add(new, head, head->next);
}

Similar to Java. I want to ask that (1) is this a well-known convention or was just invented (informally) by someone here (e.g., Linus?)? Where can I find the documentation about this convention? (2) can anyone point me to the URL of similar well-known coding conventions (except the Java one)?

Many thanks.

-Hua