[dlanouette]

I'd argue that instead, she should have emailed the rest of the team and asked what's going on. Raise the issue and let somebody take responsibility.

A potential side benefit is that you can teach more people the "right" way to do things.

Also, the comment about the docs was a really poor choice of words. A better comment might have been "Yah, they need work. Feel free to update them to make them better."

[blub]

I agree with your comment, except the last part. This feel free to do X is just a covert agressive response, not unlike feel free to submit a patch.

When I get that from a project where I report a problem I immediately think "feel free to keep your buggy docs/code".

A straight but assertive answer is IMO much better: "we don't have time to do X, could you please help?" or "we have higher pririty bugs that we need to work on, but we could sure use your help if you have some time". Heck, even "let's take 1h and work on improving it together" would work for me.

Bottom line is that unless there's a clear responsibility involved, other people don't have to perform certain tasks, so they should be politely asked for help...

[kelnos]

An even more helpful response about the docs would have been, "Could you tell me where in the docs this process is unclear so I can update it?" Everyone writes and reads and comprehends in their own way, and something that seems clear to one person can be completely obscure to another.