wiki reorg - Main Page

[Justin Wong]

Um, so I'll discuss the Main Page in this thread. (Hopefully my inline
reply works okay.)


On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Stroller
<stroller at stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 24 Jul 2008, at 20:21, Justin Wong wrote:
>> ...
>> I did read most of the emails on this list and, although it's a bit
>> unrealistic to answer every question...
>
> <devil's advocate>
> Well, either they're stupid or invalid questions (fair enough) or
> SOMEONE has to answer them.
> </devil's advocate>
>
>> - what do you think of the content on the Main Page?
>> The Main Page should have as few "content" as possible. See below
>> answers for what I mean.
>
> I don't know about _as little as possible_, but it should certainly
> be clear, concise and navigable.

Definitely agreed on clear, concise and navigable.

>
> As I said previously:
>
>   Surely the first screenful of text on the main page - the first the
>   reader sees before they scroll down to explore further - should be
>   *really* *useful* and *really* *informative* stuff.
>

I'd have to disagree here. The purpose of the Main Page is not to
house content, so nothing *informative* should be on the Main Page.
The Main Page should be a launching pad to all the other information
pages. Ideally, people won't need to scroll down too much on the Main
Page. (They should be going to other pages)


>> - is it suitable for people visiting the Openmoko Wiki for the
>> first time?
>> I'd say, no. There's an overwhelming amount of stuff on the main page.
>> I believe the theme of Main Page should be simplicity and it gets
>> people to other pages.
>
> I absolutely agree.
>
> See also my previous comments:
>
>     The "Introduction to Openmoko" ... section also doesn't tell
>     newcomers the most useful stuff - the first link is to the
>     "Openmoko" page which seems to be nothing more than a long list
>     of random hardware & software notes all mixed together. Shouldn't
>     the "Openmoko" page be more friendly?   ... who  cares about "The
>     original core team" if they were last responsible for Openmoko
>     in August 2007? Does "Trademark Policy" need such a prominent
>     position? ...  Couldn't links to the Trademark Policy be relegated
>     to the foot of the page? Likewise it has been stated in the first
>     paragraph that "Openmoko is a Free Software project" - so surely
>     we don't need to waste one of the following bolded links on
>     "License"? (again, I feel that can go at the foot of the page?)
>
> (both the above indented sections are from [1])
>
>
>> - should it be? [suitable for people visiting the Openmoko Wiki for
>> the first time?]
>> Or should it be suitable for everyone visiting the
>> Openmoko Wiki, even if they've visited before?
>> It's hard to answer this question without identifying the main groups
>> of users of the wiki.
>

I'm going to ignore all the user profiling stuff in this email thread.
 Let's make a new thread?


> I don't really see how we can absolutely identify groups of users.
> The webserver logs don't say "newcomer", "openmoko user", "openmoko
> developer".
>
> So I think we have to guess:
>
>> Presumably, there are people new to Openmoko
>> (without any previous knowledge), and then there are veteran core
>> developers. Perhaps there are more categories of people. But these are
>> my assumptions without doing any actual research.
>
> Right. Let's assume these are two reasonable categories.
>
> We can waste a lot of time putting a poll on the main page.
> Are you:
> - a newcomer to this site
> - considering buying an Openmoko phone
> - an owner of an Openmoko device
> - a developer of application software
> - a developer of core or kernel Openmoko software.
>
> But lots of people won't bother answering the poll and we probably
> won't get much better results than guesstimating. Heck, even the
> categories we suggest create a bias!
>
>> The wiki and documentation should work for all these people. We
>> shouldn't cast anyone out.
>
> Let's assume those two types of people you've identified above and
> add one more
> - people new to Openmoko (don't know what Openmoko is, might have
> seen a Wired article)
> - veteran core developers.
> - people who have bought a Freerunner and want to play with it
> (installing TangoGPS, connecting to wifi, whatever)
>
> What topics or pages should we link to in order to satisfy these groups?
>
> Veteran core developers probably know the pages they're using often,
> so I don't think we need to have so many links for them. Additionally
> I suspect their pages are better linked together. But certainly some
> first-stop page-links are needed for them.
>
> We also need to cover some of the legal & trademark stuff currently
> on the main page - stuff which we'll relegate to the bottom but keep.
> What? "Trademark Policy", "License", anything else?
>
> Brenda: sorry, we're in agreement that the main page needs a lot of
> work. And I know you've already done a lot of work on it. Please
> speak up if these changes are going to be a problem for you.

There's probably a bit of work that could to be done to the Main Page. :)

Brenda: I probably missed this on the community mailing list. Was
there justification or the research done on the changes made to the
main page? I think it'd be a good time to learn what works and what
doesn't on the current page.

>
> Stroller.
>
>
> [1] http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-July/
> 000010.html
>
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>

Cheers!

Justin