> if you aim to high, they won't admit that they don't understand, and if you aim too low they might get insulted Yes, it's a tricky balance. Another way to fr

> if you aim to high, they won't admit that they don't understand, and if you aim too low they might get insulted Yes, it's a tricky balance. Another way to frame the importance of this topic is: if you explain too much, you make your readers wade through a flood of information, which slows them down; if you explain too little, the doc is unusable. > How does one communicate the basics without sounding condescending? ASinclair's suggesting of adding a prerequisite section to your doc is a good strategy. It also helps to develop "content types" where you describe in general what types of information you include in each type of content. For example, suppose you define 3 content types: overview, tutorial, and reference. * The overview contains conceptual explanations. * The references contain everything you might possibly need to know about a given topic. * The tutorial contains task-based, step-by-step workflows. Rather than explaining concepts in the tutorial, you link them to the overviews. Rather than going into the nitty-gritty about a topic, you link to the reference. You probably get the idea from here. Each content type contains clearly-defined amounts and types of information. Rather than jamming all the information into a tutorial, you link off to the overview and reference. The people that need more information can follow the links to learn more. The people that don't need it get a straightforward tutorial without extraneous info.