RTFM? IWMITWAFM! (Was: Re: [Zope] WebDAV, Zope, M$ and implications...)

[Douglas Carnall]

> I have no understanding at all for people who tell me they need to
> make money with real projects and therefore do not have time to search
> for information. Me, too, I need to make my living and do not have
> time to write things down for others that they can concentrate on
> their projects...

Dieter,

You make fair points, and of course there are always be issues that will
only be documented on relatively obscure web resources.

As a clueless newbie, I am very conscious of the need not to waste people
time on the list, but my experience with Zope so far has been characterised
by many hours of searching to resolve what were really quite simple issues.

Now this undoubtedly represents my ignorance: I had to learn lots about user
and group permissions to get it to work, and was caught out by the default
debug mode -D problem with Zope start. Overall, it took about ten hours. But
if these issues had been in the HOWTO it would have taken one or two hours.
So Zope's patchy documentation cost me 8 hours; this did not inspire me.

Now, I do have it on my TO DO list to provide feedback to mcdonc about the
problems I had with the HOWTO
(http://www.zope.org/Members/mcdonc/HowTos/zopeinstall/ZOPE-INSTALL-HOWTO),
but that takes more time as well. When I see posts from core Zope people
saying (basically) RTFM rather than precisely referencing an issue it
depresses me, because in fact every time they do that they are weakening the
platform I hope to learn, and increasing the drag on the efforts of others
to get started.

Maybe if, as a friendly courtesy, everyone who responds on an
already-discussed issue included one relevant URL in their reply Zope would
start to be a better documented place.

D.

-- 
Douglas Carnall

tel:+44 (0)20 7241 1255
fax:08700 557879 
mob:07900 212881
http://www.carnall.org/
dougie@carnall.org