On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >
Rob-- I understand what you're saying, believe me. I guess I feel we should provide an easier avenue for people to report problems with the site itself. I'm also aware that if I just put in a simple link with a "mailto" tag, many folks won't be able to deal with that because they won't have a "default" e-mail client. How about a "Contact Us" link that directs them to our existing "Mailing List" page -- http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/mailing-lists.html. We could add a bit more description to the "Development Mailing List" to indicate that it would be used for submitting questions/problems about the web site. Or do you think it would be best to direct them to BZ? > > -- > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > MzK > > > > "Follow your bliss." > > -- attributed to Joseph Campbell > -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MzK "Follow your bliss." -- attributed to Joseph Campbell
