[webteam] Sections

[Robert Martinez]

Adam Nemeth schrieb:
> Oh, the usual "information hiding vs. modality" argument... been
> around since Palo Alto or even before...
>
> On 9/15/07, Robert Martinez <mail at mray.de> wrote:
>   
>> As we all agree we should adress different audiences differently
>> (therefore the five sections:
>> "IM-user", "developer", "server admin", "business" and a "section
>> choosing").
>>
>> First:
>>   Technically speaking - every setion is basically our same page,
>>   but offers a different perspective to all our information on jabber.org.
>>     
>
> Hmm, I think it's a wrong perspective.
>
> I'd consider it as a hierarchy - sections meaningful for:
> - Everyone ("jabber basics"): Client list, public server list, etc
> - Only meaningful for developers: code libraries, XEPs, devblogs,
> development mailing lists, service/mashup highlights (have you checked
> out airtalkr.com recently? seems to me it has an open 5222 port... :)
> - Meaningful for organization leaders, to be showed for them (by
> advocates, developers, vendors) : marketing stuff, case studies,
> commercial vendors, benefits, etc
> - Meaningful for sysadmins: jadmin list, what bugs how, etc (I
> sometimes think it's a bit similiar to developers interest and could
> be mixed well).
>   
Right. Because I think information hiding is good let's keep calling it:
  "IM-user"
  "developer"
  "server admin"
  "business"

I think everyone on the list knows what that means.
> Probably the easiest way to understand this is through ROLES: in your
> life, you have a lot of roles. You're your mother's child, probably a
> father (/mother) of your child, an employee at your workplace, a lover
> in bed... but usually the context gives you what role you play.
>
> In my current mental model of jabber.org is that when you want to get
> to know jabber, you go to everyone/IM-users/Endusers pages, even if
> you're a geek.
>
>   
I appreciate your mental model efforts, but maybe you could be more 
influential with less mental and more "concrete" examples. Because we 
haven't only been thinking about the page - it is already running to a 
certain degree.

> When you want to create something with jabber, you go to the
> developer's room/corner, which would have strange words (like C as a
> language... is it a short for chinese??) for a non-developer, but
> still familiar for you as a geek who can program. (Btw, XEPs, SASLs
> and other TLAs shouldn't run freely in the wild even there!! We need
> to have a dictionary, how about that?)
>
> If you feel comfortable with programming enough, you may want to
> introduce it to your boss, or want to sell your own program for
> clients, you look at the "For business" page to show it for them, or
> try to collect your own arguments from it.
>
> When you try to install a server at home, you may run into problems
> (like: how do I enable using AIM through jabber?) which aren't for a
> usual end-user, nor a businessman (it's enough for them to know it's
> possible.)
>
>   
I think the purpose of the sections are perfectly clear.
The question is: how _exactly_ are we going to make it happen?
>>   The way to access information should be tailored to the adiences needs.
>>
>>   Letting apart  HOW we  route the audience to the corresponding section
>>   I have a question:
>>
>>   How should you be able to change your active section?
>>   Anybody just entering "jabber.org" in his browser should be able to
>> learn about everything else on the page, too.
>>     
>
> I hope a geek always knows what "information for developers" link
> stands for at the top of the page - or maybe we should write it in
> l33tsp33k?
>
> And besides, I'm in doubt that anyone in the end user or manager role
> would like to read about C++ and other things - nor an average user
> wants to get a lot of marketing stuff.
>
> So basically, I still think it's a hierarchy, probably with the 'links
> for everyone' (alias end-users' floating always, if it does feel
> better for anyone.
>
>   
I don't understand what hierarchy you are talking about.
>   
>>   I'm not a fan of having a menu or list of links that changes slightly
>> based upon "another menu".
>>
>>     
>
> That's called modality. It's considered bad in some schools. On other
> schools, it's called information hiding, and it's considered the best
> thing since sliced bread: way too much information confuses the
> novice.
>
>   
The question of information hiding isn't always answered by the type of 
school.
I would rather say the better school adapts to the case where the 
question is arising from.
We are certainly not trying to make people use an oprating system here.
When the process of hiding information gets more complex than the gained 
simplicity you have a problem.
After all we don't need a deep cut dividing people into completely 
different audiences (exept we are keen on building several homepages at 
once), but we want to make it easier for people to find what they want.
And I admitt that I even have personal interest in keeping it "ONE" site 
instead of many.
So please try to think more about solutions that directly adress the 
fact that we have one database that should satisfy different audiences.

> Probably most developers think of information hiding as a bad thing,
> because they're clever: I mean, they CAN handle a lot of information,
> since if they couldn't, they wouldn't be able to do their daily job.
>
> But always remember: it made macs succesful - and I know a lot of guys
> here (including me) who uses a mac. :)
>
> (Probably they don't want to bother with needless information, but
> it's another story)
>   
Yes, it is probably a good idea not to start yet another flame war of 
operating systems here and now.
>> Second:
>>   Obviously we have much information that should be visible for some but
>> not for others.
>>   We need to assign and keep track of sections and their corresponding
>> pages (or links).
>>
>>   I tried to gather a more or less complete list of all available pages:
>>   http://wiki.jabber.org/index.php/Mindmap
>>
>>   The goal is to assign sections to every page.
>>   If we feel like this is feasible we could start tagging each nodetype with
>>   audience tags and build the menus accroding to that taxonomy (or we
>> could use new fields)
>>
>>     
>
> I'm still besides the good ol' hiearchy, probably with some sticky pages.
>   
Please explain how your hierarchy looks like (systematically).
If you could refer to my mindmap this would be very helpful.
You can even download the *.mm file and edit it with freemind 
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

My attempt would mainly rely on offering different starting points (one 
per section) that keep things simple and clear.
I would do that by:
1. Offering only a selected number of links to our complete set of 
information in the beginning. (A trimmed menu)
2. Offering some big fat buttons that directly link to the most 
important places according to the audience.
3. Welcome each audience with a friendly text according to their needs.