I hate to be the odd man out and side with Adobe (and no, I have no financial tie that necessitates that), but the manufacturer of the plugin should be responsible for their instructions, not Adobe. In order to build a plugin, it takes a reasonable knowledge of the entire system, and with that knowledge comes responsibility, and the likelihood that they know better than Adobe how it should be installed. The plug in maker can either provide an installer, instructions of their own, or you can:

"Make sure the plug‑in files are uncompressed, and then copy them to the appropriate Plug‑ins folder in the Photoshop Elements folder."

They should have suggested restarting Elements, perhaps, but other than that I think the instructions are valid. As one who makes add-ons (not really plugins) for Elements I don't expect Adobe to support my products -- and in fact prefer that they don't even try because they generally have no idea what I've been doing (which is demonstrated by the mere fact that I can do it).

Does anyone have suggestions for how their materials can be improved, as perhaps I am not seeing the joke?

You are right Richard the plugin maker should have instructions. I just think its funny that they put such a basic set of instructions. By no means am I putting Adobe down, just joking on them a little. I love their products and would find ways around to add wanted plugins even if there were no instructions. Besides, we have the nice new place.

I hate to be the odd man out and side with Adobe (and no, I have no financial tie that necessitates that), but the manufacturer of the plugin should be responsible for their instructions, not Adobe. In order to build a plugin, it takes a reasonable knowledge of the entire system, and with that knowledge comes responsibility, and the likelihood that they know better than Adobe how it should be installed. The plug in maker can either provide an installer, instructions of their own, or you can:

"Make sure the plug‑in files are uncompressed, and then copy them to the appropriate Plug‑ins folder in the Photoshop Elements folder."

They should have suggested restarting Elements, perhaps, but other than that I think the instructions are valid. As one who makes add-ons (not really plugins) for Elements I don't expect Adobe to support my products -- and in fact prefer that they don't even try because they generally have no idea what I've been doing (which is demonstrated by the mere fact that I can do it).

Does anyone have suggestions for how their materials can be improved, as perhaps I am not seeing the joke?

Richard,
What was the - context - of this joke? It was intended for Elements users who did spend a lot of efforts and time experimenting and searching various forums and sources to understand how to take advantage of their existing resources and wondered what would happen if they decided to upgrade to PSE6. The general impression was that there was a deliberate choice of Adobe (which is their right) to:
- limit or disable useful functions of Elements to drive customers to PS or LR (masks, shortcuts...)
- make using previous resources difficult or even impossible to re-use in a new version

The result has been that many (seems to be a majority) of experienced users (the public of this forum) decided to stay with version 4 (hiddenelements fans ... just kidding) or 5 to take advantage of their favorites resources : plug-ins, actions, layer styles etc. For those, you must admit that what Adobe states is of absolutely no use in an help file and could have been better put in a general sales conditions area.

As for a practical advice I would give to Adobe (and external resources developers) would be to state that the user should verify that external resources are compatible with the Elements version, platform and operating system.

A plugin itself is different than adding something to the styles (or effects, or artwork and effects, or welcome menu, or whatever). Specifically for 'plugins', I think their instruction is correct. As far as other third-party materials which Adobe may or may not have intended to have work with the program in the first place (I heard rumor that the release of my first tool set resulted in the firing on staff at Adobe because of the obviousl hooks left in the interface -- though I can't substantiate this rumor), they may be trying to protect intellectual landscape and difference between Elements and Photoshop which costs 10 times as much.

I am unaware of any context other than this being the first post in a thread...and coming to it without an inside line to the joke, I didn't get it.

In any case, there are add-ons I have for Elements that I never released because of installation and usability issues--and one simply due to complexity (you can create actions in Elements, but oh, my, is it a pain). Acknowledging all the possibilities and potential for add-ons would likely not be something Adobe wants to support, as, frankly, exteranal programming hackers may not always do what is best for the product...and the result may be functionality trouble for the users. I've seen quite a few come and go as far as building add-ons, and, well, most of them have pretty thin support.

What would you like to have work. Ask me, and hopefully I can help, in the words of Picard, make it so.

As Reka stated in another thread..a work around blend if and for me the fade command