On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 7:04 PM, Kay Schenk <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm just noticing that we do not seem to have a "Contact Us about this > website" link on either > > http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/ > > --or-- > > http://www.openoffice.org/ > > A somewhat minor thing I know given our focus at the moment, but...any > thoughts? > > Header area? Footer area? Side bar? > > I think a prominent "Contact Us" (some place) would serve us well in > customer satisfaction. >
I'd be very careful here. We don't have the resources for users to actually contact us, except in very limited circumstances. Remember, we have 100 million users. When users visit the website they are typically looking for something, whether a download, or support info, or something specific. We're not the kind of website that people visit just for fun. So if we put a single contact address in a prominent location, then lazy users will just shoot off emails to that address. We don't be able to handle that load. And if that address is a list address, we'll be deluged with private information going to that list. A good example of this problem is the bugzilla admin address that shows up on our BZ page. Even though it clearly says that is for only reporting admin issues, we get many support questions to that address. Ditto for the list owner addresses. Any email address you put in front of a user will be used as a life saver and grasped in their moment of need. That said, we should make sure we have coverage of the main reasons people visit the website and have a reasonable way for them to get what they need. I think the main page is fine for people looking for how to download and get support on OpenOffice. It also has a good link for people who want to learn more about the project. The podling website has specific pages for people who want to use the trademarks, report a security vulnerability and other topics. It also has a page listing all of our mailing lists. Another way to think of it: 99.99% of the time, if a user actually needs to contact us, then the website has failed its purpose. We can only handle 100 million users if, for the vast majority of cases, they can self-support themselves via the website's navigation and find what they want. So the challenge here is to handle the exceptional 0.01% of cases, without becoming the path of least resistance for the other 99.99%. -Rob > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > MzK > > "Follow your bliss." > -- attributed to Joseph Campbell
