atw: The user guide from hell

It occurred to me (while looking at the online user guide provided for our
phone system and thinking about others that I've seen for home appliances)
that it might be an interesting and instructive exercise to come up with
the attributes of a 'user guide from hell'.

Some that occur to me immediately are:


   1. It applies to a number of different models, which are distinguished
   only by a very hard-to-find identifier on the product or its packaging, and
   which have quite different configurations. Pictures (and all the most
   useful features) all relate to one of the models you don't have.
   2. It contains text in a very large number of languages. The English
   version is somewhere right in the middle and appears to be much shorter
   than many of the others. It's written by someone with very little knowledge
   of English.
   3. Most of the text consists of warnings against using the product in
   the most bizarre ways (like the user guide for an iron which warned against
   ironing clothes while you're wearing them) and is clearly there only to
   guard against lawsuits.
   4. Other topics given prominence are congratulations on buying the
   product and promotions for other products.
   5. Instructions are grouped under headings that presumably make sense to
   the manufacturers but are meaningless to the users and often use jargon
   (e.g. 'Softkey Definitions' - most users would have no idea what a
   'softkey' is - or 'Utilities' or 'Advanced Topics'). There's no index or
   table of contents.
   6. Alternatively (or in addition) there's a picture of the product with
   a large number of numbered callouts and the only instructions are listed in
   the key to the callouts.
   7. There are references to other publications from a website. That
   website doesn't exist.

Any other suggestions?

Howard

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