The Signpost and the HUC front page

[Andrew Sayers]

Matthew East wrote:
> I like the division of links at the top level now - it's clear where
> to click depending on the question that the person has. I'm still not
> convinced about the distinction between "questions" and "answers" in
> the subpages, because for me they are two sides of the same coin (i.e.
> the user has a question and the pages should provide the answer to
> that question) but it's not as prominent now so it's definitely an
> improvement.

Now I think about it, I'm not sure what you're suggesting as an 
alternative to having two pages - is it just something like 
"<<Include(Questions)>> <<Include(Answers)>>"?

This might be a minor point, but I disagree that questions and answers 
are two sides of the same coin.  It's possible for different paths to 
lead to the same answer - for example, if a significant number of people 
want to click "I would like to contribute time/ideas -> I would like to 
make Ubuntu better -> I would like to report a bug", then there should 
be a link for "I would like to report a bug" under "I would like to make 
Ubuntu better".

It might be possible to use some clever combination of includes and 
templates to attach answers directly to questions, but I wasn't aware 
that MoinMoin supported templates until your recent message, so I 
haven't yet done my homework on how useful they are and how much 
maintenance they'll need.

> Ok, that's fine by me. What sort of ideas do you have for gathering
> evidence? Just watching the PageHits page, or something more subtle?
> We might be able to get hold of the google analytics information for
> the website but as to whether that would show us whether the signposts
> are working, I'm not sure.

The idea would be to feed questions back based on the "page discussion" 
page and on IRC.  So if someone complained 'I went to "I would like to 
contribute time/ideas -> I would like to make Ubuntu better", and didn't 
find anywhere report a bug', then we'd know we had to add the relevant 
link to the signpost.

I don't see how to get useful data from page hits without putting every 
question, answer, and destination on its own page.  I'd like to avoid 
that if possible, because the extra delays with loading all those pages 
would probably cause some people to give up.

Of course, this assumes we can get users to provide good feedback. 
Right now, questions mainly from newbies that have presumably stumbled 
across the link currently on the front page, thinking we're #ubuntu. 
This might get better or worse with the new front page.

Incidentally, I haven't been able to use the page hit counter hasn't 
worked for a few months now, and I'd be interested in those stats or the 
Analytics information for just about every page except the signpost. 
But that's a matter for another day :)

	- Andrew