wiki reorg - Main Page

[Stroller]

On 25 Jul 2008, at 05:54, Justin Wong wrote:
>>   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.

I largely agree with you - and apologise if my previous terms were  
incorrect.

Definitely the main page should mostly be a launching-off point, but  
I do think there should be an element of introduction on the page,  
too. It's the first thing that people see when they reach the site,  
so there's some validity in saying "this is what Openmoko is."

Is Wikipedia is the archetypal wiki? If I take it as an example we  
can see "Today's featured article", "Did you know...", "In the news",  
"On this day..." on the main page. These sections are full of links,  
making them jumping off points, but they're structured in sentences.  
"William Gibson (born 1948) is an American-Canadian writer who has  
been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science  
fiction." There are 5 links in that sentence (jumping off points) but  
they are structured together so they are also informative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Generally I think stuff like:

   Openmoko, born as a Free Software project under GPL and LGPL license,
   is dedicated to delivering an open software stack on mobile  
platforms.
   Openmoko shipped its first product, the Neo 1973, on July 9 2007
   ... one aim: create great mobile products using the Openmoko stack:
   Open. Mobile. Free. ... includes a full X server, allows users and
   developers to transform mobile hardware platforms into unique
   products

Should be on the front page. It just needs pointing to more useful  
resources.

We might as lose the picture of the "Openmoko Software Stack" because  
it doesn't add sufficient value (and I'm not sure how valid it is).  
The picture of the Freerunner in the "Openmoko Products" section is  
good because it helps the reader visualise Openmoko, but can it  
instead link to the page which describes the Freerunner, instead of  
just showing a larger pic (and the file history, yada, yada, yawn).

> Ideally, people won't need to scroll down too much on the Main
> Page. (They should be going to other pages)

Yeah, too much. The advantage of web-pages is that we're not  
constrained to 12" x 8", but generally I think we're aiming for less  
than two screenfuls on the main page?

Stroller.