ForestForTrees
Well-known member
Hello,
I would like to request that threads for documentation requests be allowed in the suggestions subforum.
If documentation requests were allowed in the suggestions subforum, then the XenForo team would be able to get a clearer sense of how the community feels about it. When the developers sort the threads in that subforum by first post likes, they will see documentation requests on a level playing field with other requests. For example, many packages provide official developer documentation, but XenForo does not (I'm not referring to PHPDoc, which is not a good way to funnel smart admins into becoming developers). If documentation requests were allowed in the Suggestions subforum, then developers could get a clearer sense of how important the community considers development documentation to be.
Many of the features I would most want XF to be spending its limited resources on have to do with documentation. Xenforo is a feature rich application and many of the features it doesn't already have either can be provided by addons or would take an exorbitant amount of developer time to add. Providing good documentation is relatively cheap and should be appropriately prioritized.
In my experience, good documentation is a core part of user experience. It will never be as exciting as new features, but for a large portion of users, it is a key influencer of how they feel about the product. Forum threads are great, but they are incomplete, unsystematic and often incorrect, which can breed frustration. A forum can't substitute for a well-written and systematic manual.
Right now it isn't worth making suggestions about documentation because any thread will fade into oblivion fairly rapidly. For example, consider the following thread:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/is-there-developer-documentation-for-xenforo.19299/
That's frustrating!
Thanks for taking the time to read. If you don't like the request, I hope you will give your reasons why, so I may better understand them.
I would like to request that threads for documentation requests be allowed in the suggestions subforum.
If documentation requests were allowed in the suggestions subforum, then the XenForo team would be able to get a clearer sense of how the community feels about it. When the developers sort the threads in that subforum by first post likes, they will see documentation requests on a level playing field with other requests. For example, many packages provide official developer documentation, but XenForo does not (I'm not referring to PHPDoc, which is not a good way to funnel smart admins into becoming developers). If documentation requests were allowed in the Suggestions subforum, then developers could get a clearer sense of how important the community considers development documentation to be.
Many of the features I would most want XF to be spending its limited resources on have to do with documentation. Xenforo is a feature rich application and many of the features it doesn't already have either can be provided by addons or would take an exorbitant amount of developer time to add. Providing good documentation is relatively cheap and should be appropriately prioritized.
In my experience, good documentation is a core part of user experience. It will never be as exciting as new features, but for a large portion of users, it is a key influencer of how they feel about the product. Forum threads are great, but they are incomplete, unsystematic and often incorrect, which can breed frustration. A forum can't substitute for a well-written and systematic manual.
Right now it isn't worth making suggestions about documentation because any thread will fade into oblivion fairly rapidly. For example, consider the following thread:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/is-there-developer-documentation-for-xenforo.19299/
That's frustrating!
Thanks for taking the time to read. If you don't like the request, I hope you will give your reasons why, so I may better understand them.
