come on macmanx, you know better:
experimental psychology tells us the average human is mostly blind to details he is not specifically looking for. thus, users never have, never do, and never will read instructions. they only become interested in docs and instructions when they experience problems, and they usually don’t spot them when not actively looking for them. hence, the importance of contextual docs.
moreover, users seldom look for docs at the right place because the average human spontaneously asks a person when he runs into problems (e.g. when you start looking for a new supplier, you ask your contacts first). hence, the suggested bold links before the download button and in the forum. it is the extra step that might make a user aware docs exist in the first place.
regarding the security issue, i’d appreciate if you enlightened me, because i see no obvious security holes here: you can review the upgrade.php code before opting to upload it to your blog. and from where i’m standing, resulting potential security holes looks very much like an arbitrary “machine is clueless, so user is in charge of choosing the best defaults” position. if it is, i’m afraid the later is irreconcilable with my “user wants to stay clueless, so machine is in charge of choosing the best defaults” position, so i’d rather not turn this constructive thread into a sterile debate.
anyway… i’ve to admit i’m just an average, clueless, originally irritated newbie that does not read readme files. and my contribution to wordpress, today, is the time i spent giving a few hopefully constructive suggestions here and elsewhere that i think could streamline wordpress, its docs and its support workflow.
from there, you are just as free to ignore said suggestions entirely on grounds they were not worth the time you spent reading them, as you are free to read more such suggestions by subscribing to my blog’s columns, which occasionally deal with usability and wordpress, among various other topics. ??
thanks for your time — Denis
