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Ted Kosan wrote:
> Josh Saddler wrote:
> 
>> Changing it will not help the most central problem
>> we're up against: that users simply *do not read* documents, period.
>> It's not in their nature. No amount of restructuring or other
>> handholding will change that for them; they have to take the plunge into
>> the technical world of Gentoo on their own.
> 
> In the college freshman course I taught with the Handbook over the past few
> years, everyone read the Handbook ( I know because I was in the computer lab
> looking over their shoulders while they were reading it ) but only around 2 in
> each class of 25 were able to successfully install Gentoo without significant
> assistance.
> 
> My observation of students that attempt to install Gentoo on their own (
> outside of this class and without assistance ) is that very few of them are
> successful.
> 
> I agree that most people do not read the documentation and this is why they
> fail.  My experience indicates, however, that a significant percentage of
> people are reading the Handbook but are still failing because the materials in
> the Handbook are not meeting their needs.

One wonders if the handbook should meet those needs. It may be the commission
of the handbook to teach the uninitiated how to install Gentoo, but need it be
a requirement that they be able to install Gentoo without help?

You can get help from IRC, the Forums, the mailing lists, not to mention the
cadre of distro-generic support groups who can answer questions about the
handbook and its instructions. This collection of help far surpasses the
handbook in its flexibility and range of knowledge. It's not feasible to try to
write a single document to try to compete with that. Rather, we should (and do)
encourage Linux and Gentoo users to seek out these resources, because these
real time exchanges improve the distro in ways that a static document can't.

Static or not, the handbook is a fine set of instructions. It's much harder to
help people when they haven't read it, but I wouldn't expect a new Linux user
to be able to install Gentoo with nothing but a LiveCD and the handbook, and I
couldn't begin to propose changes to the handbook that would cause that effect.

Peace,
Mike Smith (a.k.a. kojiro)
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