I think the issue with some of this documentation is that for other packages, the function documentation is largely self contained. If I look up glm() it tells me how to use glm(). However, for ggplot2 there is an assumption that you have some level of knowledge of how the pieces should be strung together. So when I know I want a boxplot, and I find geom_boxplot() documentation it wonderfully describes the options for itself, and gives examples for it's use. But sometimes it doesn't give a good idea of the context of how the other pieces might interact. It makes complete sense if you read the book and just want to refresh your memory, but if you are coming in as a new user it really can be difficult to use the documentation exclusively.