Gregory's Server
In recent days, I've received a few messages and noticed some posts regarding my articles on the blog. The criticism is mainly about the fact that, in some cases, I don't document "every" step but assume a basic understanding of the topics discussed. For example, if the article is about "how to install Y within a FreeBSD jail," I don't document how to install FreeBSD, what jails are, or how they should be managed, etc. In some cases, I refer to previous articles, but my aim is never to create "for dummies" tutorials. I believe that self-hosting, if done without awareness, creates more problems than it solves.
I’ll probably need to publish an article specifically about this—and maybe link it to a menu at the top of the page to explain it. My approach has usually been to provide tools to understand how I solved a problem, not to hand out "ready-made solutions"—the goal is to help people understand, not to mindlessly copy without comprehension.
After all, the blog is called "IT Notes," and they are my notes, turned into articles, mostly related to direct experiences I’ve just had. It’s not called "IT Course"—those, when necessary, I create in other ways.
@stefano Someone recently mentioned in one chat that it really feels that many people rely on tutorials these days instead of documentation. They want to have explicit sequence of reproducible steps giving some visible result. Which isn't a bad thing by itself but quite often those people are easily confused when things are going not exactly in a way they've seen on screenshot or Youtube guide, even if it's some very clear warning/error which is well explained in the documentation. And of course for them it also becomes a very confusing problem when they meet any fairly narrow domain which isn't covered by tutorials as nicely.
@stefano Someone recently mentioned in one chat that it really feels that many people rely on tutorials these days instead of documentation. They want to have explicit sequence of reproducible steps giving some visible result. Which isn't a bad thing by itself but quite often those people are easily confused when things are going not exactly in a way they've seen on screenshot or Youtube guide, even if it's some very clear warning/error which is well explained in the documentation. And of course...