Hi Clytie,
Clytie Siddall schrieb:
I'll try replying to all three of you here. Thankyou to all of you for
your help with this. :)
I think that everybody interested in this thread should have noticed
that it moved to the right list for that purpose, so I don't think we
need to CC [EMAIL PROTECTED] any longer.
Kate said:
On 08/12/2006, at 3:48 AM, Kay Schenk wrote:
Why don't you just mock something up and put it someplace for us to
have a look? I agree that some things are rather difficult to find.
So...let's see what you come up with. :)
I'll do that, if we all think that's still useful. Please see further
down: Bernhard talks about building this into an improved Projects page.
For me it's no problem at all how you may call the page.
IMHO a page listing the starting points for everybody willing to
contribute to a specific task will need explanations about what the
projects are doing. You want to add links to the project's homepages to
your mailing lists page, I want to add links to the main lists to the
projects page: Quite similar, I think.
What I'm looking at is improving the access of the first-time or newish
user, who doesn't understand the structure of the OOo project, and just
wants to get an overview and find a specific list or project.
Exactly my goal - and the goal of the project's leads as Mathias mentioned.
In my experience over the past few months as a new and newish
participant, currently it's very difficult to get an overview, and not
trivial to find a specific project or list. You can go around in circles
on the website. It's a real time-waster.
We all know that - and many of us want to change it. But like always:
there is definitely a broad gap between tasks to do and the time to
spend for them.
But with some kind of fresh air there might be a chance to raise the
priority of this specific task (as it is one of the most important in
order to get more contributors to solve the other tasks).
[...]
In an hierarchy of information, when spreading information, you are the
information source, and where you want it to arrive is the information
target. A root information target is the key place to send information
so everyone in that group should get it.
For example, that can be the dev@ list for each project. It should be
the list for each project to which everyone is subscribed. Not one of
the lists that only some people read.
That's what I think dev-lists are dedicated for.
As another example, the main wiki page for a project could be its root
information source. When you don't have the root information addresses,
you can often miss out on background and contextual information, even
major points, which everyone assumes you know. Having access to the root
means you're starting at the same point as everyone else, or you should
be. ;)
A wiki page needs regular updates - this is much easier than updating
the main project's web page, but it needs to be done.
Some projects do already have such living main wiki pages, others don't
have (and perhaps never will). We can't force anybody to do what he/she
doesn't want to (or doesn't have the time to).
[...]
Charles then said:
FYI: this is the mailing list page as it stands today: do you think it
could be a good base to start with?
http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html
It contains a lot of useful info, but, especially at first glance, it's
very wordy and crowded.
Exactly the same with most of the project's home pages.
[...]
A lot of first-time users will simply click away from that page, because
the first screenful isn't the list of mailing lists they're looking for.
I'm no graphic designer, but I'd advise employing some icons for the
main points:
For icons, please ask at [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you know
exactly what should be presented there, I'm quite sure we'll find
someone to design them.
[icon: magnifying glass] Search [extra link:Advanced]
[icon: map or layout] Mailing List Map
[icon: tickmark?] Using our Lists
[icon: Gmane?] Lists as Newsgroups
1. I don't know how effective the Search is, but I haven't found it very
effective myself. I don't know why. Maybe I've just been unlucky. An
Advanced Search link, to take the user straight to a categorized search,
would also be useful.
Advanced search is part of the present "standard design" - at least it
is shown on most of the pages below the search input field.
2. The "Mailing List Map" is what I've been talking about. An overview.
Each project has its own category, and its own icon. Its name is a link
to its own project page. Its main lists are shown below its name, with
tooltips explaining their purposes, and a "More lists..." link after the
set number has been shown.
I do think this can link in with the Projects page. I apologize for not
catching up with that sooner: I just didn't have time to read all the
messages on that thread. I will try to catch up.
My concern is: Why does someone wants to get informations by mailing
lists instead of web pages?
I think new/newish community members should tell the project they want
to join: "Here am I, I have these skills, what can I do to help you - or
much better - I read you need ...., I'd like to take over".
You don't get in contact with the real people behind the project, if you
don't join the mailing list. But if you want to retrieve informations,
you should find them on the web or wiki pages (ideally speaking - of
course).
Therefore I'd recommend everybody to read the informations presented
there before starting a search inside the mailing lists. What we need
are project's main pages telling what users want to know - so they are
informed about the project when they decide to join.
[...]
This is just an idea: as I said, I'm no graphic designer. But I don't
think the page works, currently. We need to engage the user.
If we manage to attract people with the design of the page instead of
boring them it's half the way to get a new contributor...
Then Bernhard said:
[...]
I like your idea, but in fact this sounds more like an updated
*projects* page than a mere mailing list list.
[...]
Yes, it would do those jobs, too. I'm thinking that users may be looking
for info by mailing list, or by project. So both pages would be used.
[...]
I assume that people searching for a specific mailing list would know
in which project to look for it.
Not necessarily. That's part of the problem.
Let's say you're a user who is interested in templates. You want to ask
questions about templates, or submit some. How do you know which project
handles templates?
See the problem - but I still don't understand why the user is searching
for a mailing list. From my experience it is much better to lead him/her
to a dedicated web page with the informations.
Or you have questions about the issue-tracker. Or you want to discuss
how OOo works on your specific architecture. The main users list does a
great job of redirecting users, but apart from that, they're left
blundering around on the website. We need to show them an overview.
Exactly: An overview on the website.
You have been searching for mailing lists during the last months. Could
you please tell me, why it was rather important to find the mailing list
instead of the project's pages? Perhaps I'll be able to understand it
better by a direct example.
For all the others the informations on the projects/lists page need
to be sufficient to find the right project/category.
But how do they know to look on the projects page in the first place? :)
... because we want to tell them on this new page ;-)
You start at the homepage of a site.
http://openoffice.org/
tells you how to get the product, which is good. It does include links
called Contributing and Support, but for someone who has started to
contribute, the rest of the project is a confusing mass of sub-projects
in a structure s/he doesn't understand. Contributors need a root
information source page.
And this information should be near the top of the page you reach with
the button "new user & general info" on the main page.
If Projects is that page, we need to make sure
all new contributors know about this page, somehow. I didn't even know
there _was_ a Projects page, until you mentioned it on this list. And
I've been here for several months now.
So we will have to improve that :-)
[... several lists in de-project ...]
All of them are Germanophone, so I think most of the people searching
for such a list will start at http://de.openoffice.org.
Only if they understand how the OpenOffice project and domain system
works. We can't assume they do.
As I posted some weeks ago, the native-lang button should link to a more
user friendly page, too. Different language versions of
http://www.openoffice.org are too difficult to maintain IMHO.
On a Mailing List Map page, I was envisioning blocks like this:
Project Name [is also link to Project homepage, has unique icon]
Mailing List 1 [is also root information target, has identifying icon or
differing colour]
probably dev@<project>.OOo
Mailing List 2
Mailing List ...
Mailing List X [set number of child items]
For some projects there could be these additional lists, as they contain
more or less independent subprojects (chart / online_help / art for
example), but in most parts these additional lists would be too much for
a first impression (we have quite a lot of projects!)
Join, browse or see more lists... [link to
http://X.openoffice.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList for this project]
+1
Each item has a tooltip describing its purpose. This saves space.
We still have a lot of items for one page, but it's a start. :)
We'll have to find out when we started...
[...]
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 might be. It should be clear that "information" is a simple statement
of aims, with a link to the main info. page. It doesn't mean
overloading the list; it means just sending a notification that you're
doing something, with a brief description, some participants' names and
a link so members can follow it up if they like.
You want to modify the welcome message when someone joins a list?
If it would possible to send different messages depending on the list
you want to subscribe, this would be really great - we could have such
messages in your native language, informations on the project and so on.
But as far as I know, this is not possible in the moment.
[...]
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 these 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...
I'd like to help with that. I still think the Mailing Lists page could
be updated, as well. I'm mostly speaking of my own experiences as a
newish member of the project, and new user. I've spent a lot of time in
different projects, so I think, "If I'm confused here, what is it like
for people new to computing or to community efforts?"
Your fresh experiences serve much better to lead new members to the
right places than mine...
I'm no expert on webpage design, but I'm willing to help if I can. I do
think we need to engage the user more, especially graphically.
That's exactly what I think should be done.
Ask yourself, what the visitor of that page wants to find out and
provide these informations in a context where the user feels well.
I try to do this on the new Art project's homepage
(http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/new_index.html), but my time is too
short to work on the pages behind of this page...
Best regards
Bernhard
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