Re: Documentation and Usability
On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 05:02:59PM -0600, Mac McCaskie wrote:
>
> Monique Y. Herman wrote:
>
> >On 2004-01-17, Mac McCaskie penned:
> >That word "customer"; doesn't it imply that you paid for the product?
> -No
As has been repeatedly pointed out, but I think this point cannot
be overemphasized.
> >Anyhoo, your definition of adequate might be quite different from
> >another user's definition.
> -Very true, what is your target? Very experianced users with prior
> knowledge or ?
I think one needs to ask himself why he is using Debian, or Linux in any
form. You have people administering servers, or other very intense
professional usages. I think these people deserve serions attention.
Then you have strictly hobbyist, or people who use it for personal use
for whatever reasons. I fall into this category. I have asked some
questions on this list. Some were answered and some were not. But I
think that our questions are not as pressing as the first. Sure, we
want to get our problems solved, but they are not as time-critical as
that of the first group.
And with that, I think we need to ask ourselves just what _is_ the
nature of Linux. First off, it is provided by - as I understand it -
pretty much people who provide their time with no recompense. I don't
thinkt they _owe_ us anything. I appreciate what I get. After the
break-in of the Debian servers recently, I thought about the countless
man-hours spent in checking all the databases and verifying they were
safe and then pretty promply getting them back online. A wonderful
service - again, with no appreciable pay, AFAIK.
But I see a tremendous number of questions (some of mine, maybe, too),
that should have no need to be asked. They are really nothing but
hand-holding questions. If the person asking _these_ questions is being
paid to administer these computers, he's overpaid. But a lot of times,
its someone who's never been exposed to anything but Windows and sees
Linux and decides that this would be a nice play-pretty. These people
don't have a clue as to what to do if you can't stick a CD into the
drive and it automatically install the program hands-free. That just
isn't the case. You don't take a four-year-old and set him behind the
wheel of a car, then walk off and expect him to herd it down the road.
But many people who don't have a clue expect to be able to download an
ISO of some Linux distro, install it, and take of with no hurdles to
cross.
So the bottom line, as I see it, and it _is_ my opinion, I know, but
Linux is not a toy. You need to have some previous experience with a
CLI OS, or expect to advance somewhat slowly. You have a lot to learn,
and these people _will_ help, but they don't owe it to us to do so.
> >If there's a package that will solve a problem for me, I would rather
> >have it available without any documentation at all than have it
> >completely unavailable due to lack of documentation.
>
> -The third part puzzles me. How would you know how to use it without
> some type of instructions.
Actually, in _most_ cases, I've found that there's almost too much
documentation. It's often rather technical, and sometimes at least as
far up as my head can reach, if not a bit above it, but it's there. If
not in a man page, often groups.google.com will turn up the answer to
your question in rather full measure.
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