Am 02/10/2012 10:09 PM, schrieb Rob Weir:
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Marcus (OOo)<[email protected]> wrote:
Am 02/10/2012 07:46 PM, schrieb Rob Weir:
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Kay Schenk<[email protected]> wrote:
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.
If the issue is to give a way for people to report site issues the I'd
have text that is focused on that, like "report site problems" or
something similar. A "contact us" link is more likely to be misused
for other types of questions.
The BZ "www" product can be used to report issues on the website,
mailing lists and Bugzilla itself. So it might be best to point them
to that for reporting website issues.
Do you really want to "solve" user problems like "I cannot download AOO. Can
you help me?" over and over again via a bug tracker? I wouldn't. ;-)
IMHO forget BZ to handle these kind of issues users can report. Better to
create a FAQ or point to the User's Forums (then to point to already
existing threads).
FYI:
We have already an example that I've implemented previously for reporting
broken download links and that was migrated with the website move:
http://www.openoffice.org/download/other.html
http://www.openoffice.org/download/all_rc.html
http://www.openoffice.org/download/all_beta.html
(jump to the bottom to the last section above the footer)
That page says: "Please report any broken link or things you think
that needs to be corrected on this webpage by sending a mail to:
[email protected]."
I don't think that is what we want.
No, the only differnce may the purpose as it ask for some special thing
and not general feedback. But I see it as kind of what Kay suggested.
There is a difference between correcting content or suggesting a
different working on a webpage, and some one trying to download, but
failing. Errors on webpages, just like errors in the product's code,
should go to BZ. This is different than user support questions.
There may be cases where the user is not sure which it is. But there
are many more cases where the user knows it is an error on the page.
Best to just have them report it in BZ.
OK; then have fun to "solve" these problems. I won't as they don't
belong to this tool. :-)
Marcus
Interestingly, it seems to work to name the text like "... please use only
for broken links and for nothing else ..." as they point already to the
"ooo-dev@" mailing list. So, I think we haven't seen any mails like this,
right?
So, maybe not the worst idea to point to a mailing list. ;-) But I'm also
fine to point to the (then a bit updated)
"http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/mailing-lists.html";.
My 2 ct.
Marcus
Another approach would be to expand the homepage to have an "I have a
question" button, in addition to the "I want to learn more", "I want
to download", etc. buttons. This could link to a page where give a
larger directory of topics and where to go for more information.
Support, press, trademarks, security, volunteers, donations, etc.
Maybe a list of 20 or more. And then at the end, suggest ooo-dev for
questions on topics not listed above.
Or, maybe do this in the form of FAQ's?
Or do you think it would be best to direct them to BZ?
IMHO, yes, for reporting site issues, including content issues on the
site.
