BoĊĦtjan Vesnicer wrote:
for me it is actually very obvious an easy to understand the situation about missing documentation. In my opinion there are a couple of reasons for that: - The gurus don't have time to write the documentation since they have more important things to do, i.e. implementing features.
indeed; and since we also have to make a living, sometimes demands of projects get priority
- Documentation (in a form of a manual) is of the most value to the newbies, but they can't write a manual by themselves about something they dont't know much about. So they ask for the documentation on the mailing list, but they eventually find out that the up-to-date documentation is missing and they start to use other sources of information (wiki, mailing list, source code etc.). They learn slowly, but at the end (if they persist long enough) they know enough that they maybe could write a manual. However, they don't really need the manual any more so they decide not to write one. (Paradoxical situation, I know.)
good point ... also, writing a manual helps oncovering inconsistencies; a variant on manuals is writing articles (e.f. for tex user group magazines)
- The key is in the motivation. If you want better documentation, you have to figure out how to convince the gurus to write one.
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