Yay! Something I know about.
I've read a lot of the discussion on DevMo here, and there are many great thoughts on technology and structure.
Following best practice is a great idea; if MSDN's structure is that best practice, then let's follow it. Yay.
If you look at any publication, the paper and index, or the equivalent bits, are the least of the problem. It's defining the audience, their needs, and their wants that is the majority of the problem. When we look at MSDN, we don't get to see that picture; we just see 90 minutes of movie in the can.
This conversation should be a lengthy "them" conversation, not a "we" conversation. You live or die by reaching "them".
Suppose it turns out that 80% of readers are into Orange. Well, then 80% of the portal's front page should be about Orange and Mozilla. It's as simple as that. You don't want to spend 6 months of time and energy only to discover that.
So I say: Yay! there's lots of nice technology to use. Let's use it *after* we've got audience focus.
I would like to see bugs describing a situation that a potential reader finds him/herself in. I would see bugs describing reader groups and their issues. I would like to see a person for each audience, A person who says: "I care about these specific readers and their issues, and I'll use whatever technology it takes to find and get content to them on a regular basis". That's a sub-editor/assistant editor role.
Publishing is a really fragile business, highly prone to failure. In the US, 5000 publishers go out of business every year. The technology needed to print or upload content is trivial compared with the problem of successfully understanding readers.
What collaborative tools should we use to capture who the readers are and what they want?
A meta bug for "reader profiles" would be a good start.
A way of accepting URLs from people that helps us keep up-to-date with our audiences and their issues would be great too.
- Nigel. _______________________________________________ mozilla-documentation mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-documentation
