Ask Slashdot: What To Do About the Sorry State of FOSS Documentation?

First time accepted submitter TWX writes I've been out of computers as a serious home-hobby for many years and in returning I'm aghast at the state of documentation for Open Source projects. The software itself has changed significantly in the last decade, but the documentation has failed to keep pace; most of what I'm finding applies to versions long since passed or were the exact same documents from when I dropped-out of hobbyist computing years ago. Take Lightdm on Ubuntu 14.04 for example- its entire configuration file structure has been revamped, but none of the documentation for more specialized or advanced uses of Lightdm in previous versions of Ubuntu has been updated for this latest release. It's actually harder now to configure some features than it was a decade ago. TLDP is close to a decade out-of-date, fragmentation between distributions has grown to the point that answers from one distro won't readily apply to another, and web forums for even specific projects are full of questions without answers, or those that head off into completely unrelated discussion, or with snarky, "it's in the documentation, stupid!" responses. Where do you go for your FOSS documentation and self-help?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Back when Sourceforge wasn't a shit-heap of garbage in every possible way I did a lot of documentation for various programs. I'm not a programmer at all, but I can use the damn things and tell others how to do so as well. The biggest problems I had were ALWAYS at the hands of the developer. They'd have these posts desperately looking for documentation writers then treat us like total fucking garbage when we had to ask questions. I can't fucking tell you how many times I was told to read the fucking source, despite me being very up-front about my lack of coding ability. "If you can't figure out how to use the program then how can you write documentation?"

MOTHERFUCKER, IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT. Fuck you in your goddamn asshole you fucking arrogant fucking pricks.

I stopped bothering when I stopped using Linux, which is a story in itself. The fact of the matter is the majority of programmers are assholes that have no business operating in normal society. Lock them in the fucking closet and let them read the fucking source until they jizz all over their crusty beards while fantasizing about Stallman's brown pucker. Maybe THEN the people that make documentation will give enough of a shit to try to do so again.