Hi,
[proposing discussing changing Contributing to e.g. development]
This is a question of principle, do you listen to the other person and
try to understand them, or do you shout your own opinion and demand
they put up with it? On the internet you better listen, some other
site is only a single click away.
I do listen. The thing is that I don't believe the correlation has to do
with any relation, there are too many stages things go wrong. This is
how I believe contributing/start developping works and what are the
steps involved:
Whether you're a programmer or a great writer or a graphic designer, if
someone thinks openoffice.org is a great product, that someone may think
of joining, and helping OOo to become even better.
Actually there are not so many links to choose from: There is a menubar
with 8 options with only one that might be of interest to someone who
wants to help out. Then there are the three links for native language,
new user and download. And the OOo description also features a number of
links, which can be marked as irrelevant even before they are processed
by the human eye. I think the number of links that needs some consious
processing is about 11.
I don't think people are so stupid that they are unable to find the
place to start when this place is not called development, but contributing.
What is harmful imho is the number of clicks, and even more importantly,
the path one needs to go through. That's why I would focus on the
architecture of the information instead of naming. I am not a C++
programmer, but let's imagine:
"Hey, this OOo thing is cool, I got some spare time, let's find out"
-programmer browses to the OOo site-
"Hmm, this is kinda end-user oriented... where can I find the
developpers pages?"
-I assume the programmer will now only check the menu bar-
"Guess contributing is what I am looking for"
-clicks-
"Yeah programming, let's get information for programming on OOo"
-clicks on programming-
-kind of shocked by the amount of text-
"Hey a todo list... let's see"
-clicks-
"Hmm, irrelevant, no programming, no programming, no... hey, here's some
programming to do..."
/I'm now going into a doom scenario/
"But what /I/ am really missing is SVG support! I would really like to
contribute to that"
Programmer searches the page using the search option of his browser to
SVG and finds "Graphic System Layer Project"
"Hmmm... most is about EPS display and stuff, but let's find out..."
"Na...this is not what I am looking for..."
- programmer is now loosing hope and starts for another project (or
building his own office suite... )
What we at the moment seem to disagree on is where it is going wrong (I
acknowledge there are serious problems with the site). I don't think
it's going wrong at the start already. I think it goes wrong as soon as
the user clicks the programming icon it starts going wrong... but I a)
can't verify it since I'm not a programmer and don't think like one b) I
don't think any correlation search could help us out here.
What is more valuable are reports from real users trying to find
information they can't find. Maybe every page should feature a link I
got stuck here! I would like to see reports of users getting stuck
somewhere, and try to discover why. That is interesting.
Yours,
Maarten Brouwers
ps. Kay, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is
listed as page maintainer of the developper pages... Who will ask him to
join discussion? (or ask him where we should go to if we want to discuss
his pages?)
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