[IAEP] New sugarlabs website

[Eben Eliason]

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/
>