Amazing that people can complain that an open source tool is too well-documented.
The famous 'build a blog in 15 minutes' was Rails' elevator pitch: intriguing, representative, but by no means a complete picture. You still needed a full reference to get real work done. That's what this is.
There's plenty of Rails documentation, as well as for-money books and screencasts, already in existence. Generally, the successful ones tend to be tight and light. "Agile development with Rails", not "Extensive 1000-page guide to Rails". Worth also pointing out that I'm criticising the commercial effort here, not the general goal ("help people use Rails").
Also, as I mentioned, I'm not part of the target market, so my criticism may be off-base.
You're right that 1000 pages might be a little crazy. As I noted in another comment, that total included the pagecount of the Rails 2.3 Tutorial book, which comes for free with any PDF or bundle purchase. The Rails 3 Tutorial book itself is only around 500 pages. I've updated the descriptions on the Rails Tutorial website for clarity.
The famous 'build a blog in 15 minutes' was Rails' elevator pitch: intriguing, representative, but by no means a complete picture. You still needed a full reference to get real work done. That's what this is.