Yes, the quality of the documentation will be noticed when it stands above the crowd, and people will compare technical docs product to product. This article titled Solaris Review: Solaris Welcome Home! by Brandon Werner that I found on James Governor’s del.icio.us list has a great section talking about mature documentation (and even hints at the inadequacy of wiki for technical documentation, although I won’t interpret beyond what he might have intended). Here’s an excerpt from the relevant section. A good read.
Solaris 10: Documentation without the O’Reilly Tax.
What really separates Solaris 10 from the pack is the documentation. If you don’t think you’ll take advantage of documentation, it’s only because you grew up without it on Linux, and Google has been your only recourse. Solaris did not grow up in the world of HTML HOW-TOs and Wikis. Far from it, there is enough documentation online to kill a rainforest if printed. And it’s really good documentation too; documents that walk you through everything you’d ever want to do from setting up Sendmail to using NIS+ to configuring network services. It has high-level overviews with detailed walk-throughs and advances at the level of the reader by providing quick methods to get started and then drilling down in to the details as people get more comfortable with the services they are deploying.
An interesting side note — Brandon’s in the Cinci area, where I went to grad school and completed my first tech writing jobs. Eat some Skyline Chili for me if you’re in the area, please.