Thanks for your reply, Bernhard. :) On 09/12/2006, at 11:00 AM, Bernhard Dippold wrote:
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.
OK.
For me it's no problem at all how you may call the page.
That's good: I sometimes have trouble finding all the right terminology. ;)
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.
Yes, I agree. I think we are responding to the same needs.
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.
Exactly. :)
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).
I would be willing to help with this.
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.
It would help to have that shown on the overview page, make them a different colour or something, and have a footnote explaining: subscribing to this list gives you the widest information access in that project.
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).
Yes, we can't make people do anything, but we can recommend wiki pages, support them, point to examples. Wiki pages don't have to be completely open, if people are concerned about access: you can lock individual pages, just like locking files.
[...]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?It contains a lot of useful info, but, especially at first glance, it's very wordy and crowded.http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.htmlExactly the same with most of the project's home pages.
True. I hope nobody takes this as a lack of appreciation of their efforts: it's simply that things can always be improved, and the situations go on changing. It's useful to respond to this as openly as possible, allowing as much contribution and development as we can. There are way too many barriers in the world as it is, without us creating more. :)
[...]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.
Good idea. I've also posted an invitation to our project (vi)'s lists for members to participate in the Docs project via templates and graphics. I did mention icons. I hope someone will have enough confidence to respond. :)
[icon: magnifying glass] Search [extra link:Advanced] [icon: map or layout] Mailing List Map [icon: tickmark?] Using our Lists [icon: Gmane?] Lists as Newsgroups1. 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.
Yes, but it's not currently available for the Mailing List Search.
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?
Because that's how you get information in free-software projects, especially if you can't find the info on the project's webpages.
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're assuming that the user understands that OOo is divided into a lot of sub-projects, and that processes depend on this hierarchy. Other open-source projects are simply one project, within which there are webpages and lists.
I started out by searching on the website, and if I couldn't find what I wanted, the next step was to ask on a list. I did know you had a lot of different lists, so I'd search for the right one.
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).
I agree in theory. In practice, it's not working.
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.
And, in order to find those projects, that OpenOffice is constructed of sub-projects, in the first place.
The user isn't looking for projects. S/he is looking for information. I agree that the website is the logical place to do this. That's why I strongly recommend a link from the front page to a Site-Map type page showing the overall structure of OpenOffice.org, the name and purpose of each project and a link to its page.
[...]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...
Absolutely.
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.
If we make it easier to find that information, yes. I did look for information on the website, and didn't find it.
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.
I didn't understand that OOo was composed of sub-projects. In all my other projects, if you need information on something, and can't find it on the website or wiki, you ask on the appropriate list.
For example, I had questions about updating our website. I couldn't find anything on the website about the CSS, navbars or hiding sections of the page. I didn't know that websites was a separate project. So I looked for a list about web maintenance.
It's only in the last few days that I've finally realized that OOo is a superdomain composed of a lot of sub-domains, and so (for example) that one can actually find a sub-domain by putting its name in front of the .openoffice.org main domain in the URL.
I've been here for several months. But up until a couple of days ago, my mental image of OOo was a big grey cloud into which I couldn't see. On the outside of the crowd were the mailing lists of which I am a member: traffic lights in the fog. But their glow doesn't go far, and there's no visibility after that. I can't see how the mailing lists fit into OOo, I can't see how anything is connected together.
I know our localization project (which would be a language team in any other project) is part of i18n. There is no i18n. There is l10n, and Native-Lang. So I try to see our work as part of both of those. I think l10n is a subset of Native-Lang, but it's hard to be sure.
It's no wonder so many of us stick to our own projects, where we have some idea of what's going on, and don't try to make sense of the outside world. There is no clear overview, no paths everyone can see. I have felt, as I have said elsewhere, as though I were blundering around in the dark. And if I feel that way, with quite a bit of experience in l10n projects, how does a new user feel?
People need to know where they stand. They want to understand the overall structure. As two examples, developers need to understand how everything fits together, and women always construct an effective overview before participating with any confidence. I think those two situations also apply to a lot of people outside these two sample groups. It's about the way we think.
Ambiguity, lack of clear pathways, lack of an openly-accessible overview, all result in a group of people doggedly pegging out their own little clearings in the murk, but they don't result in effective cooperation or shared growth. There's no real understanding of the overall structure, no sense of shared purpose. Most people are simply discouraged by such a situation.
In the majority of free-software projects, when a new person arrives on the list and asks to participate, you immediately reply in an email containing welcome, a link to an overview page, a link to any specific FAQs or HowTos affecting the main task, and a link to the webpage listing all teams and contact details.
Immediately, this person has an overview, they see where their proposed activity fits in with the overall project, they have the basic information required, and they have lines of communication.
I've seen several people pop up on mailing lists and volunteer to help here at OOo. The welcome is sometimes there, which is good. But there's never an overview. The response is generally:
at bestWe could certainly use your help. Please see our main wiki page (link) and our ToDo list (link). We invite you to our IRC meeting on #xxx at Y time. The past meeting logs are here (link). This page (link) lists our current aims. You'll need to join the project (link) and get an account with the Issue tracker (link). We hope you find this project fulfilling. :)
mediumThere are a number of efforts to do W. X did Y a while ago, and Z's CWS seems to have stalled. We could work on A. There was a discussion about B. (No links, no description or explanation.)
at worst no response I've only seen one or two of the best kind of response.
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 ;-)
If it's on the main page, we have a start. :)
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.
I don't think most proposed contributors will press that button. "New user and general info" implies a very basic level of information. People coming in from other free-software projects consider themselves fairly experienced users, and are looking for very specific Howto-type links. Here's the map, here's the process for getting involved, here's how you communicate and with whom, here's a list of useful docs. They don't want what they see as newbie info.
They're really looking for a "So you want to participate in OOo?" page. The Why OpenOffice proposed page is excellent for that kind of style.
http://wyrfel.reukauf.com/hosting/OOo/Why_1/en/index.htmlBut an overview can help everyone. So I think it needs to be accessible from the main page, maybe via the Site Map link. Perhaps we should beef up the site map (which people accustomed to websites routinely use to find things and get an overview) to supply a higher level of info and a more accurate overview of the OOo project.
If Projects is that page, we need to make sureall 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 :-)
Yes indeed. :)
Only if they understand how the OpenOffice project and domain system works. We can't assume they do.[... 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.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.
Hmm, I like the idea of the website automatically supplying the appropriate NLP site in response to the user's browser prefs. Did you know we still get users on the "users" list writing in in different languages, or asking where they can download OOo in their language? The list does a good job of pointing them to the NLP pages, but we could avoid all that by using the user's own preferences and sending them straight to their NLP page.
That's much friendlier, much more likely to engage their activity. If you don't speak English, and especially if you use a different alphabet, a homepage in English is just alien and meaningless for you. You get big brownie points in the user mind if you automatically present them with a page they can read.
If you can't read Arabic, or Russian, or Chinese, go to a totally strange page in that language and imagine you're there because you are interested in downloading their product.
What can you do?By contrast, if when you went to that site, it automatically presented you with a page in your own language, there is no barrier. You can get started. And especially if your language is not routinely represented on websites, you really value any project which uses it. I've had people write to me, in tears of joy, because they'd found translated pages I'd put online. One woman wrote, "I couldn't believe that someone had done that, for me!" It makes you feel very humble.
Non-English speakers, especially those who don't read languages routinely shown on websites, are so used to the Net being a mass of unreadable text, that any site which they can actually read is a beacon in a very confusing world. Surely there's no reason why the OOo site can't automatically show the NLP pages, which are already there. It would win us a lot of friends. :)
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
Yes, but it will need to be obvious to everyone that the dev@ lists have that rôle. We need to encourage people to form and use the information network.
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!)
I agree. I was talking about a page dedicated to mailing lists. ;) I agree with you that an overview page should show the essential points.
Join, browse or see more lists... [link to http://X.openoffice.org/ servlets/ProjectMailingListList for this project]+1Each 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...
Yes. :)
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.
No, sorry if I didn't make that clear.I was talking about the type of mail you send out to the information network when you are starting something new, making changes, looking for participation etc. For example, the Template Competition.
But I like the idea of welcome messages in your own language. :)
Your fresh experiences serve much better to lead new members to the right places than mine...
It is really hard to keep a clear memory of what it's like not to know things. So my ignorance is at your disposal. :D
However, I defer to your experience of the project and its website issues. I can only make suggestions based on my experience of other projects, and my difficulties here. I hope I can help.
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...
That's really good, Bernhard! :)I do suggest using other colours, not only blue. Otherwise, you lose impact.
I like the idea of an unique icon for each project. Your OpenOffice Art Project header would grab the eye most effectively if it contained a distinct icon for the project, possibly the seagull with a dripping paintbrush in its beak, and a beret tipped rakishly on its head. ;)
I wish I could draw these things, not just think of them. :Sfrom Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN
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