Products · Broad category
Documentation
Raised as a usability problem by 38 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 34 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Good documentation information is hard to findUnreviewed
20142026- Documentation is often poorly written, so users struggle to follow it2026-01-15
- Documentation scattered across many tools, so it's hard to find anything2023-05-23
- Documentation was frustrating enough to slow the commenter down at first2022-12-13
Docs are missing, outdated, and lack examples and illustrationsUnreviewed
20142026- Docs written by experts assume knowledge and skip steps that the intended audience needs2026-10-11
- Searching the docs often fails to produce answers, so people resort to trial and error2023-12-13
- Docs barely enough to start and omit features, so users must experiment to learn them2023-06-15
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 38 complaints
- Docs written by experts assume knowledge and skip steps that the intended audience needs2026-10-11
- Documentation is often poorly written, so users struggle to follow it2026-01-15
- API documentation is janky and slow to search for answers2024-10-29
- Docs repeat trivial instructions like pressing save for every field2024-07-29
- Outdated screenshots leave new users unsure they're doing things correctly2023-12-14
- Documented options don't exist in the UI, wasting time searching for them2023-12-14
- Parameter docs describe values vaguely, so readers can't tell the expected format and get parameters wrong repeatedly2023-12-14
- Instructions don't show where controls are, so users can't find the icon or menu entry2023-12-14
- Searching the docs often fails to produce answers, so people resort to trial and error2023-12-13
- Operator examples say 'guess' and never explain what the operators do2023-12-03
- Docker's documentation is poorly written, so finding answers takes a long time2023-11-12
- Install pages offer only container packages, leaving no clear manual install path2023-11-07
- Snippets don't work alone and it's unclear where they belong or what they nest in2023-07-20
- Finding config file location requires scanning the whole manual page, which is slow2023-06-25
- Docs barely enough to start and omit features, so users must experiment to learn them2023-06-15
- Admins must dig through architecture docs to find install instructions2023-06-12
- Documentation scattered across many tools, so it's hard to find anything2023-05-23
- Documentation was frustrating enough to slow the commenter down at first2022-12-13
- Docs site is completely unusable on iOS, so the commenter can't check them2022-11-27
- Documentation is hard to search and find answers in2022-11-22
- Reader finds the project's documentation confusing and cannot tell how it works2022-09-12
- Documentation is a mess, so the reader gets confused2022-07-29
- Commenter cannot figure out what the page is about despite trying2022-06-28
- Must open a ticket and re-paste the same fix to correct docs2022-06-11
- Hard to find things in the docs2022-03-22
- Had to dig deep into docs to understand what the framework is2022-01-27
- Can't find a function in the docs2021-07-01
- Good documentation information is incredibly difficult to find2021-06-25
- Custom dependency and setup steps are hard to follow, making new developers struggle and lose morale2021-01-16
- Docs are missing, outdated, poorly written, lack examples, and lack illustrations, so readers give up on them2020-04-05
- Documentation search rarely finds the needed information or the authoritative source first2020-03-01
- Searching internal documentation for relevant results is hard, since code-search heuristics don't transfer2020-03-01
- Searching a command's docs returns a page mostly about unrelated, irrelevant content2019-01-29
- Manuals restate names without explaining meaning, ranges, units or examples2018-12-16
- Obsolete docs lead people in the wrong direction, wasting hours on simple tasks2018-12-13
- Commenter finds the docs incredibly confusing and can't find basics to run it2017-04-05
- Documentation for the last 20% is hard to find2015-12-14
- Developer cannot find explanation of what the framework does2014-12-04