pidgin user guide

[Ethan Blanton]

joanna.bujes at oracle.com spake unto us the following wisdom:
> This is the worst user documentation I have ever used.

Such helpful commentary!

> There is no conceptual oververview, it does not explain the user  
> interface nor the work flow and it simply assumes the user already knows  
> the basics of Pidgin components and instant messaging.

This is a little bit more helpful, though not much.

> Please put some effort into this. It is embarrassing to you and  
> frustrating to the user.

Since we don't really have a user guide, but there is a link to the
FAQ on the Pidgin web site which says "user guide", I assume you're
talking about the FAQ.  You're right, it's not much of a user guide.
It's a pretty OK FAQ, though.  I'm not particularly embarrassed by it.

Pidgin is an open source project.  This means that it is developed by
programmers in their spare time, and they choose to give their effort
to you, the user, for free, in the form of the software they have
created.  Not only did you not pay anything for Pidgin, no one pays
anything for Pidgin -- it is completely free, developed by volunteers
and donated to the public.

As you can imagine, developer time is valuable and difficult to come
by.  For this reason, we allow developers to work on whatever tickles
their fancy.  Unfortunately, that is almost never documentation.  Our
programmer's documentation is far better than our user documentation
because, as you might expect, developers find this more interesting.

A number of years ago, some users sat down and started an actual
Pidgin user's guide.  It was never completed, however, because this is
a long and difficult project -- compounded by the fact that the Pidgin
UI is constantly changing as we fix bugs and improve various features.

Since you obviously care about this sort of thing, perhaps you would
like to volunteer to revive this project and produce a proper user
manual for Pidgin.

I note that you're Yet Another confused Oracle employee.  I fear the
problem here is that your company handed you Pidgin and told you
nothing about it, and did not tell you that they did not pay a dime
for it and that we have no direct responsibility to support you,
leading you to embarrass yourself and your company in front of a large
number of people.  (This mailing list has hundreds of users around the
world, most of whom are fellow users of Pidgin or the aforementioned
developers.) You might want to take that up with your management
and/or IT staff, and suggest to them that they support the software
they distribute.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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