FronPage troubles

[sparkes]

Alexander Poslavsky wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 18:17:13 +0000, Louise McCance-Price
> <lu at canonical.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hi Alex
>>
>>A little more feedback:
>>
>>I think we are at risk of focusing on "Documentation" only, but the wiki
>>is a brainstorming area for everyone and everything to do with Ubuntu.
>>The community must not be afraid to contribute here and there must be no
>>"barrier to entry" so to speak.
> 
> 
> How to get that thought across? I spent today looking around on
> several other wiki's etc. It is difficult, either a wiki is a mess or
> too unfriendly. How to balance this?
>  
it is an incredblly difficult task to maintain a wiki that works for the 
users and the casual content provider.  This is a job of the gardeners 
(something I don't find interesting enough to do myself, sorry guys) but 
how to keep the brainstorming area and the docs area both working at 
full tilt without putting off the casual use of either side is difficult.

How to maintain a good architecture and promote growth will be sorted by 
the decision to move more stable docs (and stable versions of evolving 
docs) into the doc section of the site and out of the wiki.

> 
> This is something the whole team should do, i have been moving stuff,
> but what is logical to one person might be difficult to another.

I don't have any interest in moving things around in the wiki.  It's not 
my personal itch to be an administrator so you shouldn't really say it's 
something for the whole team to do.  We all have different skills and 
it's not fair to push people into doing jobs they don't like.  If 
someone where to pay me this would change.  Paying work is all about 
doing things I don't consider fun but ubuntu development should be fun 
and that's why I chose to work on the doc team and not the dev team. 
The dev team is too much like doing paid work ;-)


> 
> FEEDBACK GUYS!
> 
> 
>>    * Decide whether is should be on the main website or on the wiki,
>>      and then create the section/page on the website or wiki to
>>      accommodate it.
> 
> 
> This we need to figure out, i personally do not understand the need
> for most of the website... so we need discussion on this.

I see your point but I would prefer to see some of the wiki moved into 
the main site.  I think this is the cannonical position on how the docs 
should be presented, in the docs section.

I agree this is something that needs discussion because we do seem to be 
having problems with this point and it should be clarified what the doc 
team are required to do and where things should go.

This should go into the new docs maintainer/contributer doc that enrico 
is working on IMHO so we need clarification to move on.
> 
> 
>>    * We need to have information for our users as accessible as
>>      possible - 3 clicks rule :o)
> 
> 
> We need sb really bright for this, or really smart mouseclicks. How
> can you keep the numbers of links down and the number of answers
> high???

Information Architecture.  Click the docs link to get to the docs. 
Keeping old wiki pages active (dev pages) but moving to the doc section 
with a 301 perminently moved so google et al play catch up nicely and 
old mailing list searches don't go 401 on us.

> 
> 
>>    * Alphabetically ordered info is always easier to find unless there
>>      is a logical order to the info that overrides it.

There should be time spent finding the logical order and alphabetical 
added as an alternative for people stuggling with the ordered list.
> 
> 
> We need macro's for this, we had them in moin! 

is the wishlist item added for this?  It should be a simple thing to add.

> 
>>perhaps we need to encourage people more openly.....a suggestion: and to
>>move the ban on changing the front page to the documentation pront page.
> 
> 
> Done
> 

cool.  As Mark S said in the CC meeting a mark of our success is the 
amount of extra help we can enlist.  Something I have been a little 
slack in encouraging when I have seen obvious candidates on the user list.


sparkes