Python documentation too difficult for beginners

[Terry Reedy]

On 11/2/2010 2:43 PM, Tim Harig wrote:

> The real question is what do you want to gain by your posts here.  You
> should already know that most groups are, by their very nature, slow to
> make changes to the status quo.  The problem tends to be exasperated in
> open source projects where any changes mean that people have to donate
> their time to make anything happen.  You will in general find two things to
> be true:
>
> 1. Since they are dontating their time, you will find that people tend to
> 	scratch their own iches first.
>
> 2. People who do take the time to contribute to open source projects are
> 	people of action.  They don't tend to be appreciative of those who
> 	constantly generate feature requests but have no inclination to do
> 	any of the work themselves.  They do appreciate other people of
> 	action who are interested in making the project better.
>
> Therefore, if you truly want changes in the documentation, I suggest that,
> rather then whining to the group, you make some of the changes yourself.

I agree up to here, with a different interpretation of the last clause.
Work within the existing system. There are currently 250 open doc issues 
on the tracker at bugs.python.org.

After registering, go to the search page
http://bugs.python.org/issue?@template=search&status=1
select Components: Documentation and hit Return (or [Search])

Find an issue that is waiting for someone to suggest a new or 
replacement sentence or paragraph, and make one. No .diff patch 
required, just put it in the message. Or look at existing suggestions 
and comment.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy