Instructions on Starting Syncthing Automatically in the Documentation

Development
#1

I have a question regarding the instructions listed in https://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html.

Are these instructions supposed to be targeted at complete newbies, who need 100% step-by-step guidance, or rather assume that the user knows at least the basics of using a computer (e.g. operations like copy, rename, extract, etc.)?

Right now, it seems that some of the instructions are a little more advanced, while others explain all the steps in very plain and easy language, with no place for errors.

I am curious what is the preferred way here.

#2

Just my two cents, nothing authoritative - I’d say just by merit of writing docs you have quite a bit of freedom of scope:
That part in general should be reasonably clear, but I don’t think we should explain “non-Syncthing” steps in detail or “basic computer steps”. That does not include anything that’s special to setting up Syncthing, even if it doesn’t directly involve Syncthing. If something else is complicated, it’s better to point at a canonical resource (as in something that won’t be obsolete in half a year) or just mention a few keywords, such that the user can search for help. I wouldn’t want to keep longish explanations of third-party stuff up-to-date.
And on seconds thoughts: I think they can be reasonably concise, as anyone that doesn’t feel at ease with computers should just use synctrayzor/syncthing-macos which take care of startup (at least I hope macos does :slight_smile: ).

And thanks for helping with the docs, that’s very much appreciated! And a very important contribution to the project - docs didn’t get all the love that they could have.

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#3

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I completely agree with what you are saying.

My main field of knowledge is Windows, and I have some ideas on how to improve the instructions for the OS a little bit (not that they are bad now), but as I started to do modifications locally, I realised that I was writing more on how to deal with basic file operations rather than focusing on Syncthing itself, and I would like to avoid that.

I also believe that in case the user does not know, for example, how to download and unpack a zip archive, then using SyncTrayzor (or another wrapper) will likely be a much better way to set up and run Syncthing in their situation.

As for the Docs, I am not the best writer at all, but I do have a lot of experience in helping people with computers, of all age and skill level, and thus had to learn in the process how to explain things in plain and simple language that both a twenty- and seventy-year old can understand. I would now like to use this knowledge to at least help with the documentation, which I consider extremely important. It helped myself greatly too, when I was learning Syncthing for the first time.

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#4

I think the rest of your paragraph strongly supports that you are a great (docs-)writer:

Great to hear the existing docs helped. And again, awesome that you now help improving it - I fully agree it’s important!