Re: [Bug-gne]About the project

[Jon Babcock]

Hector F. Arena wrote:

  <snip>

  The web pages has been updated with the original announcement and a link
  to Nupedia, so in the meantime, people can help -the- GNU encyclopedia
  project (Nupedia).


Perhaps the process to see what is going on in the Nupedia project
should be made simpler.

My first impression (and it is merely that) is that the Nupedia UI is
too complex.  I am not saying that the organization of the
encyclopedia material is too complex, but that the organizational
structure of the project appears to a newcomer such as myself to be
overly complex. It seems to require too much study just to get in the
door.

What I would have liked to have seen, when I got to the Nupedia home
page, would be three or four sentences saying something like this:

"The Nupedia Project consists of three main groups: 'Publishers',
'Editors', and 'Writers'. You may join the main Nupedia mailing list,
or the primary mailing list for one or more of these three groups,
simply by becoming a 'General Member of Nupedia'."

[If you follow the 'General Member of Nupedia' link, after a very
short sign-in form, you would see "Sign up for one or more of the four
mailing lists 'here'. For a description of each group and its primary
mailing list, see below."]

[Words within single quotes would be, of course, links.]

[A general, 3- or 4-paragraph statement of the purpose and nature of
the project could follow on the home page. And that's all.]

This would allow a newcomer to immediately jump in and see what is
happening. Further hierarchical differentiation of functions, special
mailings lists, etc., would present themselves only after the newcomer
has had a chance to follow at least one of these four primary mailing
lists for a while and to visit the respective Web pages for each group
for detailed information.

==

>From my choice of the main areas of responsibility above, it should be
clear that I think the role of Editors is of equal importance to that
of Writers and Publishers.

If we add to the above three groups, a Leadership group that deals
with the overall project philosophy and direction, currently headed by
Hector, we find that we can, without difficulty, allocate any specific
issue that has appeared on this mailing list since January 17 (when I
joined), to one or more of these traditional groups. So, naturally,
the home page I would like to see for the Gne Project would look just
like the one I proposed above for Nupedia.


Jon

--
Jon Babcock <address@hidden>