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At first I wanted to dicuss a dependency hell I came across whilst checking the dependencies of systemd, udev and any package dependent on either of those. I stumbled upon a circular dependency affecting Wayland, WebKit2GTK and wpebackend_fdo, all being dependent on each other for no obvious reason. Before I could dig depper, however, I noticed my own network configuration running three different tools out of the box, namely Network Manager, wpa_supplicant and iwd.
Not being familar with iwd and wpa_supplicant, I experimented a bit and accidentally killed Network Manager in the process by disabling wpa_supplicant, falsly assuming that the very few tutorials explaining the difference between iwd and wpa_suuplicant would also provide a guide to only run one of those. Sadly, no tutorial specified that wpa_supplicant is mandatory for any WiFi relying on WPA+, which pretty much all home-based WiFi connections use.
I checked the Arch Wiki and read various pages dealing with network configuration. /Network_configuration#Network_managers lists iwd as supporting WPA, WPA2 and WPA3; /Network_configuration/Wireless lists iw as not supporting WPA+ at all; /title/iwd lists iw as more-or-less-partially supporting WPA but not WPA2 or WPA3. No "Discussion" page acknowledges this and, to my own surprise, those pages are often used as a replacement for the forum, with users asking for troubleshooting guidance, instead of contributing to the Arch Wiki and its factual accuracy.
To summarize this particular issue, I eventually figured out which tool is need for which usecase:
Which means that my usecase involves disabling iwd because it cannot manage my WiFi and it already being blocked by Network Manager upon boot.
This strange default setup of Archcraft is not the fault of Adi, rather it's the result of the contradictory pages of Arch Wiki. The Gentoo Wiki, in contrast, is even weirder, as it lists iwd as an up-and-coming replacement for wpa_supplicant that already supports WPA (there is no mention of WPA2 and WPA3 whatsoever). So, what's the truth?!
It also doesn't help that the Arch community has got its own definition of what a "wiki" is supposed to be, which is the complete opposite of the definition established by Wikipedia – the Arch Wiki is not supposed to be an extensive encyclopedia, it's a collection of how-to's and "recipes", assuming that a superficial introduction as practiced by Wikipedia is unnecessary because the user is assumed to already know everything (and if they don't they have to check the original sources listed in the "See also" sections or are just "plain stupid to grasp something this easy or to use a search engine").
In effect, it's not a somewhat-trustworthy tertiary source to get you started in terms of understanding what Arch and, by extenion, the user actually are doing; it's a collection of questionable configurations often based on incomplete and outdated information. This especially pronounced on the German Arch Wiki, which outright host first-person commentary and instructions written like "This is how I setup X but I also use a script written by myself to make it do Y" (with the script not being avaiable anywhere).
It thus is rather less surprising that this practice is being defended by parts of the Arch community and may result in accusations that any criticism of the Arch Wiki or even a superficial comparison with the Gentoo Wiki is an attempt at "getting people riled up".
"The holy wiki is overrated. : archlinux" (Reddit)
It generally is a lousy approach to assume that trial and error alone is the best way to learn Arch because many users eventually will be confronted with similar issues, all of which already have been solved by other users multiple times but with varying approaches and varying results. Rather each individual internalizes practices that may get a certain job done but also may be horribly inefficient and cause a new set of issues.
Arch Linux, which I habe been using since 2021, doesn't define "KISS" as "keep your SYSTEM simple, stupid" but "keep us away from all those learning noobs in the least efficient and hardly-working way possible, stupid". Which is sad, considering pacman is among the best package managers DESPITE its odd syntax and semantics.