Re: [Gnu-arch-users] brain picking (web presense stuff)

[Tom Lord]

    > From: "Robert Anderson" <address@hidden>

    > >Wow.   That's a lot of replies.

    > >By way of a straw-man, when I'm currently thinking is to try to fill
    > >in all the links of this:

    > >    http://regexps.srparish.net/www/view.html

    > Frankly, I think you're wasting your time to spend too much on
    > content rather than presentation.  To me, what you related
    > sounded like (although it was a brief paraphrase) the classic
    > issue of perception of "professional company with an 800 support
    > number" vs. "bunch of hackers with a mailing list", and has
    > almost nothing to do with substance.

    > I think what was really needed there was a slick corporate
    > looking web page, with a professional logo that fades, made by
    > "branding experts", and a little picture of a smiling young
    > female wearing a headset in one corner, with a phone number under
    > her picture.

    > Maybe that's slightly over-the-top, but probably not by much.

Yeah.  Really, I think the truth is somewhere in between.

Yes, some additional "gloss" would be good.   You can't get much more
simple-minded in web design than what I can produce.

But the "content issue" is real, I think.   I'm trying to imagine
myself in the position of a manager whose primary focus isn't revision
control, but who is smart and concerned about that topic.   What I
_think_ I'd really appreciate is a site that really condensed a lot of
the good stuff into a compact form --- that helped me to quickly come
up to speed on the issues and then understand, in that context, the
solution being offered.

Interestingly, I think that some of the competing sites pretty much
_fail_ at that.   I'm not sure what to make of that.   But at the same
time, the current arch sites fail even harder --- it's basically
impossible for someone to quickly get oriented about arch and that's a
real problem.

-t