Not reading Github pages is stupid and ignorant. You can use Github as a publishing platform. It CAN be good enough for documentation for a small or medium sized project. This can allow quick creation of fairly nice docs, allowing the coder to get back to coding. Hell, all the kernel docs are text files. You gonna tell me you'll never read them on principle?
Judge documentation by its quality of content, not its publishing platform.
> If your documentation is a directory full of files on GitHub, I close the tab. With GitHub Pages, Read the Docs, and other places to host generated documentation for free, not making an effort is unforgivable.
He's not arguing against GitHub pages - he's arguing against just linking to a file/folder in your GitHub repository and thinking you're done (e.g. https://github.com/<org>/<project>/docs).
GitHub renders markdown files. So the difference between clicking on navigation links in a documentation website and clicking on markdown files in a GitHub docs folder is... the CSS theme.
As I see it, the author of TFA is simply offering some heuristics for judging whether or not he's going to have a hard or an easy time working with a project's documentation. So in this view, presenting documentation using a structure that is specifically intended for documentation is taken as an indicator of care and attention to detail. I wouldn't say that he's arguing that a directory full of files isn't functionally equivalent or isn't useful.
(Personally, out here in the real world, I'll put up with all sorts of limitations — even a complete lack of documentation — if somebody else's existing code solves a problem that I have.)
Judge documentation by its quality of content, not its publishing platform.