Re: About merging the Hurd homepage and the Hurd wiki

[Thomas Schwinge]

Hello!

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 11:35:10AM +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Am Sonntag 09 November 2008 22:47:41 schrieb Thomas Schwinge:
> > That's a valid concern, yes.  But also, the question here is, whether we
> > really want to take so much care of people who blindly, thoughtlessly
> > click on the first link they see, and are not themselves able to navigate
> > through the whole page.  We indeed may have to be so careful.  What do
> > you suggest about how to split the text?
> 
> I think we should take care that the main points about the Hurd are 
> accessible 
> to everyone, regardless of how intense he or she is reading the page. 
> 
> Just imagine Hacker X getting the link in a mail from a coworker, while he 
> just takes a short break to get his head cleared from a damn mess of 
> licensing 
> issues. He may have heard of the Hurd, but the 30s of attention he spends for 
> checking if the site is worth his interest (that's a quite high number) have 
> to suffice to show him that he should dig deeper (what I think is necessary 
> for that: "What is the Hurd", "The Hurd is active", "the Hurd works right 
> now", "the Hurd offers unique features", "You can contribute"). 
> 
> The following few minutes should show him, how he can test it and, if he's 
> interested in contributing, how he can contribute. 

I can completely see what you're out for.  The question just is whether
random hacker X, who doesn't even have the time to properly read provided
information, is really going to support the Hurd project lastingly -- and
that's mainly the people we're out for.  It may be, or -- perhaps more
likely -- it won't be.  Of course, we need/appreciate every single little
contribution, but the more wighty ones are the better ones.

When I was reading through the Hurd web pages for the first time, I also
only had a quick look.  But I bookmarked them for later perusal.  Which I
then did some weeks/months later.


> I think this could be accomplished efficiently by changing the link name in 
> "What is the Hurd" from "Read on" to "more detailed"

Ah, now that's a valid point.  ``Read on.'' perhaps indeed suggests to
the reader to immediatelly follow the link, which ``More detailed.''
doesn't neccessarily do.

> and changing the 
> structure so that "What is the Hurd" becomes a regular section and the news 
> are a simple list (<h2>News</h2><ul><li>newsitem</li><li>newsitem</li></ul>). 
> Also I'd put the table of contents above the news (but below the "What is the 
> Hurd" section) and include the news in it. 

Now I'm not sure if I got that completely right, but does the result on
<http://www.thomas.schwinge.homeip.net/hurd-wiki/> look like what you
envisioned?


Regards,
 Thomas

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