Greg KnaussI propose a day, once a quarter, where the team maintaining an open source project sits down with a new user and silently watches them try to compile it, using only the instructions on the website.
Chris Ferdinandi@gknauss OSS maintainers don’t owe anyone anything.
Ava 
@cferdinandi @gknauss Of course not — but if they want anyone to be able to use the software they spend so much time on, they need to know where the issues come up from actual users. And a lot of readmes telling people how to install/build OSS are not user-friendly, even for people that know what they’re doing.
@avakining @gknauss that is very very fair!
I think there are two types of OSS project: Those that people build for themselves, and then put on the Internet, just to be nice, and those that are clearly trying to amass as many users as possible.
I probably have different expectations for one versus the other.
Charlie@cferdinandi @avakining @gknauss
I think it may be possible there is a third type: people that are trying to help out a community with useful software or whatever, without trying to turn it into a "how many users can I get" job.
They are still interested in people being able to use it without having a post-grad degree in compiling random coders mess from github.
@BoscoZebra @avakining @gknauss That's still the first type, IMO.
Don't get me wrong—most tech docs suck! I just don't think complaining about free software from people is the look.
@cferdinandi @avakining @gknauss
That's fair, complaining is probably the entirely wrong approach.
I also think it's fair if someone says "this code will do X, here's how you assemble it and those instructions are unclear or wrong, it's not unreasonable to reach out and say "Hey man, documentation says to do X, I did it, this is what is happening, how do I fix that"
I also largely ignore social media/comments, so I may be missing some important context, are the comments awful?
@BoscoZebra @avakining @gknauss Social media comments on OSS generally aren't the issue. Tickets and demands for more free labor generally are.