Submitted by jam (not verified) on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 13:44.
I think you hit several nails on the head here; the main one being that 3rd party documentation providers have the freedom to address their work to specific audiences for specific purposes while adding value to the Drupal experience and biosphere for everyone. The more people who distill down their Drupal knowledge and experience into digestible pieces, the better!
During my first attempts at installing and configuring Drupal (4.7), the "signal-to-noise ratio" for beginning users on drupal.org was overwhelming. Not knowing all the jargon or the right keywords to search for, I waded through pages and pages of gnarly, hard-core stuff, hoping to stumble on whatever simple configuration information I was hunting for. I suspect the experience remains daunting for newbies, although the value of drupal.org has grown for me with my ability to understand and appreciate the incredible depth and value of the information available there.
In Acquia's case, we are trying to make Drupal easily accessible and attractive to as many people as possible, and have a lot of documentation aimed at getting up and running quickly and easily. As part of the same goal, we also have a number of ways to make installing Drupal easier than ever like the Drupal stack installer for Windows and Mac (and soon Linux!) and the full Acquia Drupal distribution in a public SVN repository.
I think you hit several nails on the head here; the main one being that 3rd party documentation providers have the freedom to address their work to specific audiences for specific purposes while adding value to the Drupal experience and biosphere for everyone. The more people who distill down their Drupal knowledge and experience into digestible pieces, the better!
During my first attempts at installing and configuring Drupal (4.7), the "signal-to-noise ratio" for beginning users on drupal.org was overwhelming. Not knowing all the jargon or the right keywords to search for, I waded through pages and pages of gnarly, hard-core stuff, hoping to stumble on whatever simple configuration information I was hunting for. I suspect the experience remains daunting for newbies, although the value of drupal.org has grown for me with my ability to understand and appreciate the incredible depth and value of the information available there.
In Acquia's case, we are trying to make Drupal easily accessible and attractive to as many people as possible, and have a lot of documentation aimed at getting up and running quickly and easily. As part of the same goal, we also have a number of ways to make installing Drupal easier than ever like the Drupal stack installer for Windows and Mac (and soon Linux!) and the full Acquia Drupal distribution in a public SVN repository.
And yes, as I mentioned, we really appreciate the help provided by anyone who helps us out by taking this very quick survey.