[webteam] Sections

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Sorry for top-posting, only have a few minutes.

I agree with Adam's basic approach. IMHO the homepage is the end-user
section page, and we will create other section pages for the other
audiences (server admins, developers, businesspeople). As to how that
will happen, I keep creating pages, check out the tracker for details.

:)

Robert Martinez wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 7338 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Url : http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/webteam/attachments/20070917/b3cbe297/attachment-0001.bin