OT Humble Pie (was hardw words)

[Johnson David]

On Saturday 29 March 2003 07:35 pm, Frans-Jan v. Steenbeek wrote:

> Sometimes I even find the manuals too complicated.
> Open-Source-fighters should write all their text (especially their
> manuals) in understandable english for the "other part" of the
> community. That's what came up in my mind while reading this.

If there is jargon in the documentation, it should be removed. But 
reducing its verbiage to the lowest common denominator is excessive. 

In the US (and maybe even in other English speaking nations), there has 
been a movement to "dumb down" communication so that we do not offend 
those who might have failed the second and third grade. We even have 
newspapers written to that level. The sarcastic responses you have seen 
here are merely visceral reactions to against a perceived goal to dumb 
down the FreeBSD documentation to the level of "USA Today".

David