[IAEP] New sugarlabs website

[Carol Farlow Lerche]

Furthermore, if you can't browse you must guess or use search, which leads
you into a maze of twisty little passages all alike (but not what you want).

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 7:38 AM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org>
> wrote:
> > David Farning wrote:
> >> When things settle down, I would like to get google analytic running
> >> for the static portion of the site to see how the click through and
> >> bounce rate compare with the wiki.
> >
> > Please use our analytics account based on Google Apps for all
> > sugarlabs.org websites: UA-6267583-1 .
> >
> > I guess Christian should do it, or it will be overwritten the next time
> > he updates the website.  In the future we should consider using better
> > collaborations tools, such an SCM, to let multiple people work on the
> > static web site.
> >
> >
> >>> I think as a rule we should make sure that any given page with a
> >>> number of related sub-pages has an index of sorts which exposes the
> >>> next-level-down to make browsing as natural as searching.  In other
> >>> words, every sub-page should have (at least) an incoming link from its
> >>> parent page, so the tree of all pages is connected in a browsable way.
> >>> (We get a link from the sub-page back to the parent page—all
> >>> ancestors, actually—for free.)
> >>
> >> Does anyone know how to do this in mediawiki?
> >
> > Dunno.
> >
> > I think the #1 issue with the wiki is not navigability, but clutter.
> > We're not helping the user by increasing it with adding 10 more links to
> > the 100+ we already have in every page.
>
> My point here is really one of discoverability, so in a sense we're
> arguing similar high level points.  It's not easy to find what you
> want among 100+ links on a given page, but it's impossible to find
> what you want if there is no link to it at all, and search doesn't
> work reliably.  Perhaps my previous statement about making a general
> rule is too strong, but I still think there are lots of places that
> need to be more browsable.
>
> Honestly, I think almost any situation which merits hierarchy on the
> wiki for logical grouping *probably* merits links from parent to child
> pages anyway.  Consider the DesignTeam/Designs page: It discusses
> design goals at a high level, and it summarizes each of the posted
> designs, with links directly to the individual design sub pages so
> that people can get more detail about each.  Why would we not want the
> DevelopmentTeam/Release page to have links to release notes for recent
> releases (at the very least, the most recent!)?
>
> In other words, what good is a hierarchy if it's not a browsable one?
> Things may as well be flat if there's no way to move through the tree.
> I raise the issue because I myself have fought this many times,
> frequently attempting to browse through the hierarchy to find things,
> only to find no links to pages I know full well exist. In order for a
> wiki to be usable, it must be both well organized and well linked
> (well linked doesn't imply excessively linked; just intelligently).
>
> - Eben
>
>
> > I especially dislike the blue translation bar containing lots of weird
> > scripts.  People know to use Google Translate without every web site in
> > the world hinting them at it.
> >
> >
> >> Search is currently pretty nonfunctional because mediawiki can not
> >> search within words.  So we need to get rid of the CamelCase as soon
> >> as possiable:(
> >
> > I will ask SJ what he did on wiki.laptop.org to improve upon it.
> >
> > --
> >   // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
> >  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://www.sugarlabs.org/
> >
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
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