Even though I don’t completely support what the other person said, the defense you are making here is dangerous. It’s not gatekeeping or anything like elitism, which is the argument of the other person. I don’t see the point of arguing with them regarding it.
So here you said ‘biting more than you can chew’. The fundamental problem I see here, which is something people say about Linux also, is that the entry barrier is pretty high. Most of the time it stems from lack of easy to access documentation in the case of Linux. But when it comes to some specific projects, the documentation is incomplete. Many of the self hostable applications suffer from this.
People should be able to learn their way to chew bigger things. That is how one can improve. Most people won’t enjoy a steep learning curve. Documentation helps to ease this steepness. Along with that I completely agree with the fact that many people who figure out things, won’t share or contribute into the documentation.
My point is in such scenarios, I think we should encourage people to contribute into the project, instead of saying there are easier ways to do it. Then only an open source project can grow.
The barrier of entry is not kept intentionally high. That’s what gatekeeping is.
I think we should encourage people to contribute into the project
Yeah, and one such way is to go through the documentation, work through the points where things are not clear and make a PR with the changes. That is much better for everyone involved than going around calling for a conspiracy to keep beginners away.