Info is even worse IMHO. Navigating a hierarchy makes it harder to skim and search through, as well as easier to get lost. And when you have such hierarchy, manual writers can use that as an excuse to write even longer (sigh) manuals.
To me, much like code and math, the art of writing good documentation is all about finding a way to make it short and simple (but still correct and complete).
You can search a whole info file just as quickly as a man page, and using the index you can jump to the canonical docs for any argument or command in one go (ever spent time trying to find the hyphen-character section of a man page but struggled because it's referenced in 10 places?). I'll admit that whenever in man or info, I will generally go straight to the examples section because that's just how my brain works, but at that point I appreciate that info files aren't stingy with detail.
> You can search a whole info file just as quickly as a man page
It's possible that I just don't know how to use info. I always end up in the wrong place. That does not happen with man.
> and using the index you can jump to the canonical docs for any argument or command in one go
How?
> (ever spent time trying to find the hyphen-character section of a man page but struggled because it's referenced in 10 places?)
No, because the options are indented and inserting a few spaces before the hyphen in search string eliminates virtually all in-text references. Conventionally, the options are alpha-sorted too. In info pages, I end up wondering which section the option I want might be covered in.
To me, much like code and math, the art of writing good documentation is all about finding a way to make it short and simple (but still correct and complete).