Hi Clytie, *
Clytie Siddall schrieb:
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(follow-up on this list)
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
We've been discussing mailing-lists on [EMAIL PROTECTED], the fact that
there are so many of them, and people can't or don't find them to
communicate with each other.
My problem is not only the number of lists, but that many topics start
on a not really suitable list. If you are not subscribed to this
specific list, you'll miss that topic.
Sometimes the topic is changing slightly, so you don't even know exactly
when to switch to another list.
But this is not what we'd like to discuss here...
I still think a central mailing-list page, reached from the front page,
is a good idea. It doesn't have to list all mailing lists. It can list
the main lists for each section (we can have a Misc section for lists
their members don't think fit anywhere), with a tooltip for each list to
explain its function and save webpage-space. At the end of each short
group of mailing lists for each major project or category, would be a
"More lists..." link. This would take you to a separate page listing
_all_ mailing lists for that main project or category, and/or listing
the separate mailing-lists pages involved.
I like your idea, but in fact this sounds more like an updated
*projects* page than a mere mailing list list.
The informations you want to add to the lists are informations about
what is being done in the projects (if I understand you correctly).
Main points:
- What is be done in which project
- link to the projects homepage
- link to it's dev mailing list (archive?), as this list should be the
main project list (if there is another one more important for the
project, it might be linked instead or additionally)
- perhaps a link to the users mailing list of a native-lang project.
I envisage something like a Site Map, possibly with an
easily-recognizable icon for each main project/category.
An icon for each project would be great!
It could be presented on it's homepage (larger) and on each sub page in
a smaller scale.
This might improve the look of the pages for a "standard user" and -
using a common style for the icons - keep the unified impression of the
pages at the same time.
Each main part
has several child items, then the "More lists..." link.
I assume that people searching for a specific mailing list would know in
which project to look for it. For all the others the informations on the
projects/lists page need to be sufficient to find the right
project/category.
The reason for the main mailing list and the "more lists..."
(.../servlets/ProjectMailingListList.html) is clear. But what kind of
child items do you think of?
For example:
The Germanophone project contains besides [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] a
specific marketing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), a list for coordination of
the "PrOOo-Box", our CD-Rom subproject ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), a list for the
OOo camp ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), where we coordinate weekend meetings with young
people, and several others.
All of them are Germanophone, so I think most of the people searching
for such a list will start at http://de.openoffice.org.
It would give the user an overview of the OOo lists, which currently we
don't have. It constructs a viable hierarchy of information.
That's right.
But linking to the lists is not enough - much more informations are
stored at the web pages of the corresponding projects. So I'd think it
to be better to refer people asking for advise to the project's pages
instead to the mailing lists only.
If someone wants to inform people inside a specific project about what's
going on elsewhere, I think the dev-list should be sufficient.
I also propose each main project/category choose one list to be their
root information target, and labelled as such on these pages (small
icon, different colour), identifying it as the list for that group to
which you should send new information.
That should be the dev-list on all projects, I think.
It's very difficult for someone outside your project to know how you
handle your information flow. Designating a root information-target list
shows people where to send that first email saying:
"We're looking at/starting X. These are our aims. These people are
involved. Please see our main wiki page/webpage. [link] We invite you to
contribute by..."
This *must* be a major part of the project's home page IMHO. Before
joining a mailing list people should know about what the project is doing.
Perhaps I got you totally wrong, but in my eyes all you describe could
be part of the to-be-updated projects page:
http://projects.openoffice.org/index.html
I would like to work on this. What do you think?
Please do so, if you think your goal is different from that what the
update of the projects page aims for.
But if you think this efforts could be combined, this might lead to a
totally different projects page - with relevant informations about all
the projects for developers, other contributors and mere users...
Best regards
Bernhard
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