this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Yeah I think that's why it's valuable to talk about these additions. Is mentioning LLM prompts even of any value?
But that is a separate (and imo much stronger) argument than the whole "mentioning Copilot is MS shilling for their own products"-argument.
@ChairmanMeow I think it's relevant, though — like, if we accept that the whole premise of Copilot is that it doesn't need to be documented, then you have to ask what Microsoft *were* intending to accomplish by putting it in the docs. Clearly they had *some* goal in mind and "to make people use Copilot" is the only thing I can think it could be. And if this bit of the docs exists not to help the user but to drive traffic to Copilot and that's, I mean, yeah, that's an advert disguised as a help file and it's... at best icky
I mean, that's entirely assuming that Microsoft also accepts that the use of Copilot requires no documentation. And given that Microsoft does have decades of experience dealing with users doing all kinds of dumb shit, they might not necessarily agree.
@ChairmanMeow that doesn't strike me as a particularly strong argument for directing those users to a system that will sometimes just make stuff up?
That's assuming you read it that way. I don't really read that section as "Hey go use Copilot for this". Rather as "If you're using Copilot, here's how to do it with that".
@ChairmanMeow if you're using copilot, why are you reading the docs?
Copilot isn't perfect. And sometimes you don't know that you can make Copilot do something if you don't know it exists.
@ChairmanMeow Sure, but in this scenario you already have the relevant page of documentation open in front of you, so why would you *want* to know that Copilot exists?
But that's not what the section does, it highlights how to use what is being documented with Copilot, in case you're not sure how to prompt it correctly.
@ChairmanMeow ok, but again,
There is no reason to ask copilot to do this relatively simple task if you have the docs open in front of you
If you have to look up instructions for how to prompt copilot to do something then there is no reason for copilot to exist
Just give me one realistic scenario where this information helps someone other than Microsoft's KPI tracking executives
Perhaps true, the value of LLM prompting instructions are probably limited.
I disagree with the premise that requiring instructions on how to prompt Copilot for something eliminates the reason for Copilot to exist. Copilot is a tool and just like any other tool it may require some instructions for someone who is new to it. You and I might find it intuitive, but Joe Shmo might not.
@ChairmanMeow the interface for copilot is "you ask it to do a thing in plain language and it (sometimes) does it", I'm sure joe shmoe is more than capable of handling that
You'd be surprised...