Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Do you want to write pages that thousands of people see every day?
I like what's been done so far. My day job is actually for a publisher
selling computer help for beginners, so thought I'd share a few things
we've learnt:
* Address people personally, and try to make them feel included. This
is why {{helpme}} is a great invention.
* Bullet points are useful, but prose is engaging too. If you make
prose interesting and relevant, believe it or not people *will read
it*, even if it's relatively long.
* Screenshots (especially labelled ones) are great for newbies. It's
remarkably easy to overlook parts of the interface.
* Videos are even better, plus they can have a more personal touch :-)
* Easily readable text is more important than fancy design. That
usually means black, and of a reasonable size. Too many bluelinks in a
passage make it harder to read, and can be distracting. Short line
lengths are nice too.
And thoughts on what we've got so far:
* Redesign: Seems pretty good, improves on the original which itself
has already had quite a lot of work.
* Polish version: Not sure it's a huge help really, throwing them into
creating a userpage without much guidance. If this is used it might be
a good idea to prefill the edit page a bit to help them.
* Options: To be honest I found it rather confusing. Some boxes to
separate the options better would be nice.
* Video1: This is nice, good to see something a bit different.
* Easy steps: I definitely prefer this to the Options one
* Bookshelf: The idea of having a book intro is great, and it provides
the opportunity to do some really nice design. But there are parts of
the text in this which are almost unreadable.
* mod2 (FT2's version): The overall design is nice, and it's laid out
logically. I'd fix the header colours though.
* Video walkthrough: I think this is my favourite. Good job Sage.
Anyway I'll have a crack at making my own version tonight.
Pete / the wub
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Do you want to write pages that thousands of people see every day?
Great with so many ideas and comments. Feel free to edit the pages or, even
better, create your own versions. They don't have to be that impressive now.
We can work together to make them better once we knows which way to go.
I will start testing the first one in a few hours. I just realised that I
should forwarn people on the System messages changes and feel that we can
wait a little to gather consensus.
Best wishes,
Lennart
2011/2/22 Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.com
I like what's been done so far. My day job is actually for a publisher
selling computer help for beginners, so thought I'd share a few things
we've learnt:
* Address people personally, and try to make them feel included. This
is why {{helpme}} is a great invention.
* Bullet points are useful, but prose is engaging too. If you make
prose interesting and relevant, believe it or not people *will read
it*, even if it's relatively long.
* Screenshots (especially labelled ones) are great for newbies. It's
remarkably easy to overlook parts of the interface.
* Videos are even better, plus they can have a more personal touch :-)
* Easily readable text is more important than fancy design. That
usually means black, and of a reasonable size. Too many bluelinks in a
passage make it harder to read, and can be distracting. Short line
lengths are nice too.
And thoughts on what we've got so far:
* Redesign: Seems pretty good, improves on the original which itself
has already had quite a lot of work.
* Polish version: Not sure it's a huge help really, throwing them into
creating a userpage without much guidance. If this is used it might be
a good idea to prefill the edit page a bit to help them.
* Options: To be honest I found it rather confusing. Some boxes to
separate the options better would be nice.
* Video1: This is nice, good to see something a bit different.
* Easy steps: I definitely prefer this to the Options one
* Bookshelf: The idea of having a book intro is great, and it provides
the opportunity to do some really nice design. But there are parts of
the text in this which are almost unreadable.
* mod2 (FT2's version): The overall design is nice, and it's laid out
logically. I'd fix the header colours though.
* Video walkthrough: I think this is my favourite. Good job Sage.
Anyway I'll have a crack at making my own version tonight.
Pete / the wub
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--
Lennart Guldbrandsson, Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation and chair of
Wikimedia Sverige // Wikimedia Foundation-stipendiat och ordförande för
Wikimedia Sverige
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Do you want to write pages that thousands of people see every day?
On 2/22/2011 4:20 AM, Peter Coombe wrote: * Screenshots (especially labelled ones) are great for newbies. It's remarkably easy to overlook parts of the interface. Pages like this come to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page (soon to be moved to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing). -MuZemike ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
