I understand what your saying Randy and I agree, there's no use handing out recommendations without a little guidance to go along with it.
But if I may elaborate on my earlier point, some hones need less guidance to use and give the same or better results. I feel the D8EE is about as user friendly as a honing surface can be. It does not need to be soaked; does not form a slurry, which is a confusing topic for newbs; never needs lapping, which can be done improperly and create it's own set of questions; does not create a wire edge, which is sometimes hard to diagnose and difficult to avoid sometimes; it's performance does not depend on how many passes you do on the different grits because there is only one, and as soon as the bevel is set, the edge is as polished as it's ever going to be, so your done.
To me it's like having to teach someone to drive an automatic car versus a manual one; both will get you to the same destination but the manual transmission introduces a handful of other factors that aren't necessary for the beginner to worry about. Sure there are benefits to the manual transmission, and a skilled driver can then make the choice to use them as the need arises, but for the learning process they are mostly a hinderence.
I remember stumbling on many of the usual problems with the norton when I was learning to hone with it and enjoyed learning how to do it correctly, but I sure would have had a lot more fun if the D8EE had been around instead.
Just my 2 cents.