@Joe, That's not why I provide documentation. I don't know why Hagar invests all of the effort he does in tending the English-language Community Forums. I doubt it is self-defense.
I think the present misunderstanding may be related to different pictures of the worlds each of us lives in. Projecting one's own world onto that of another, without considering there may be entirely different perspectives involved simply inhibits communication and learning. Especially learning. The abundant evidence suggests to me that Hagar's devotion to OpenOffice is invested in user-facing support and there are preferred, already at-hand tools that serve his fulfillment of that ambition. When a tool is not already at-hand, learning it will always introduce friction and distraction from a direct, already-available path. Also, a particular tool may not work very well in the existing practices of a contributor. For example, I avoid browser-based authoring when at all possible, since the risk of lost work is too high and I want an opportunity to reflect and refine off-line. The generalities and divisiveness around the merits of mailing lists, forums, wikis, version-control systems, and content-management approaches demonstrates to me that one-size does not fit all. Asking someone to retool is not trivial except from the perspective of those already invested and loving it. I find that some old dogs prefer to go where there is still limitless mileage in the old tricks. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Joe Schaefer [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 10:58 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Java download link on AOO site [ ... ] You write documentation largely as a means of self-defense so people will read it before occupying your time doing it for them, because it simply doesn't scale as a mode of operation. Nobody paid anyone to service their needs, so expecting others to do your work for you is anathema. [ ... ]
