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Re: Documentation and Usability



On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:10:38 -0600
Mac McCaskie <mccaskie@kc.rr.com> wrote:

> Colin and Stephen
> 
> Let me understand you correctly.  You admit the documentation needs 
> improvement and might be slightly un-helpful to noobies.  So your 
> solutions are (1) to tell (not ask) the noobie to do fix it (the same 
> one that doesn't know enough about how to use the system) and (2)
> blame the stupid noobie for is ignorance by not working hard enough.
> 
> Solution one will perpetuate the inadequate documentation problem.
> Solution two will enforce the "Brotherhood of Linux Clubhouse Rules" 
> and perpetuate the frustration of future noobies.

Step back and chill out, please. Nobody is blaming anyone. They're
simply describing how the Debian organization works.

What, exactly, do you see as an alternative? That you, a self-proclaimed
noobie, dictate how *volunteer* developers spend their time? Debian is
not a business. No one in the project is accountable to the public for
the state of the system. It is generally known that documentation is
less-than-perfect (though not atrocious, by any means). So it's not like
devs are under some illusion of perfect documentation. If someone is
interested in writing the docs, they will. Otherwise, they won't. That's
it. Apart from doing it yourself, there is nothing more you can do, and
bad-mouthing the state of affairs on the list is utterly pointless.

As has been pointed out to you before, Debian is not the only distro out
there. Red Hat has generally good docs, in my experience. If docs
are what you want, use that. And, they're a business. If you're not
happy with their product, they're likely to listen to you, provided you
give them constructive feedback. I'm certainly *not* saying "Go away,
you dumb noobie and leave us alone to our cult." The volunteer,
non-commercial nature of Debian does not suit everyone's needs, nor does
it proclaim to. If it doesn't work for you, use something else. But
don't waste your time and energy, as the saying goes, trying to teach a
pig to sing. You know the result of that...

-- 
Todd Pytel

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