agree with Grant. If you want to know what a particular command
does and what its options are, man pages are fantastic. If you are a
new or casual user trying to find out what command(s) to use to
accomplish a particular task, the man pages are an exercise in
frustration and futility. Other OSes have done a better job in that
area (the VMS and DTSS HELP commands come to mind). IMO ideally one
should have both--a generalized "help" command for those trying to
find out what command to use, and "man" as reference material. UNIX
and Linux have never had a proper help facility. Or at least I never
was able to find it.
I've often wanted a 'man -v' which printed a more-verbose version of the man page, if it were available, otherwise the standard one for less-often-used commands that are a pita learn at the start, but once you learn you just want a quick refresher.
Pike could then do a paper 'make -v considered harmful' :)
Warner