Re: quo vadis, docs

[Amondo Roquentin <amondo globalstatic net>]

Luis Villa wrote:
> 2009/2/9 Natan Yellin <aantny gmail com>:
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Dan Winship <danw gnome org> wrote:
>>> Dave Neary wrote:
>>>>> - Should we just ditch the docs and declare the UI self-explanatory ?
>>>> Definitely not.
>>> Why not? Seems like no one has ever bothered to file bug reports about
>>> the fact that they're wrong... Maybe there are as few people reading the
>>> docs as there are writing them. In a corporate setting, people will call
>>> their help desk when they have problems, and in a home setting, they'll
>>> either ask a friend/family member, or ask on a forum. (If people RTFMed
>>> first, we wouldn't need an acronym for it.)
>> This is a moot point unless it can be proven.
>>
>> If we want to get rid of the docs, we need to run a survey/study first and
>> determine how many people read them.
> 
> Lack of bug reporting[1] about obviously broken things is the closest
> thing we've got to proof, and has in the past contributed to (IMHO)
> fairly sound decision making.

I think it is rather questionable to base such a decision on the absence
of bug data.

With most other parts of GNOME, this would be perfectly reasonable.

But in my experience, most *users* are not aware that they can file bugs
for documentation.

Rather, it is generally believed that bugs are things you report for
software only.