Wiki link in main banner
 

I have only been using this site for a few months now since getting my N900 but the one thing that strikes me is that there is no quick way to the Wiki.

Could i suggest adding 'Wiki' button in between Community and Development for the maemo banner?

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

It was discussed at length during the planning phase of the redesign and again during the implementation.

Basically, the idea is to have subjects in the navigation bar, not tools.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

...and every subject should provide the appropriate entry points to the wiki.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Ahh i call foul on the subjects, because there is a Talk link ;)

Not sure if this will rehash old ground but my thoughts are that the Community is rather broad subject but Wiki (or Documentation subject) is a subject in its own right.
For new people visiting this site the documentation should be their first port of call and also reduce the excessive posting in the forum on topics covered in the wiki.
I would say that even novice users upon seeing a link to the wiki would associate it with a knowledge base due to Wikipedia popularity.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

I'm with Cas07. One of the constant complaints that 'people don't read the wiki' might be reduced if there were a nice, clear link to it on that task-bar. Call it 'knowledge base', documents' whatever - but put some sort of direct link up there.

Especially since 'community' on the top bar takes me to the front ot the maemo.org community section, whereas 'community' on the sidebar takes me to the t.m.o. community. Since I'd expect 'community' to mean the same thing in both placs, I might never click the 'community' tab until after I have been bawled out for not using the wiki.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Talk was integrated later on. Besides, there would've been riots in the streets if it hadn't been included in the top-level navigation.

Users landing on the front page have a "Get help" link over in the sidebar, developers landing on the front page have the development link in the top bar. Most everybody else is landing here through Google searches.

This argument has been rehashed at least 3 or 4 times.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

And you don't think the changes in the demographic of t.m.o. in recent months make it worth having a fresh look?

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

I'm sorry but I am going to have to completely disagree with the outcomes of previous arguments, it is not common sense web design. As RevdKathy stated the demographic has changed radically in the last few months and change is needed to keep up.
Ill outline some of the points that i have noticed, most of which can be dealt with easily with a simply page update as i understand more fundamental changes require time.

A case in point about general users is a post by qgil explaining that people who like forums, rarely venture away to go exploring for more information, be that news or documentation.

I did some research on the pages you mention and this is what i found:

maemo.org/support

• There are two links called Tutorial and FAQ but no other links to Documentation or the main Wiki page.
• You are advertising Nokia forum links before any of the sites own links, from my point of view it seems odd as you are taking users away from this site.
• Side issue: There is a link to a talk forum that is not this sites official forum.
  Edit: Didn't realise it is actually this forum but still confusing to point to an external site main page rather than directly here.

maemo.org/community

• The is a link the wiki but it is so understated it too me 5 visits to the page initially to even notice it. Obviously i did notice the wiki recent changes panel but i was expecting to see a prominent main page link.

maemo.org/talk

• There is a reference to the wiki in a 'Read First' topic in the N900 forum only, realistically there should be a forum wide topic or some other method.
• Make the moderators aware of the wiki and get them to actively promote pages that are applicable.
• Further to this encourage the first poster of a topic to update with any useful finding from ensuing discussion.

http://wiki.maemo.org/

• This maybe something only i am looking for but the addition of a link to the wiki Categories in the navigation sidebar
• The inclusions of breadcrumbs would be a possible help too

That may be so however my first experience of using this is that in order to find the Wiki rather than simply navigating the site, going back to Google was an easier way to find it, until Firefox kept it in its address bar history. So i can bet that if you ask basic users on this site to find the wiki main page they would struggle. Imho that is bad web design relying on an external search engine for main site links.

I certainly think the work by everyone, especially the developers, involved with maemo is fantastic and I apologise if my reply is curt but I am simply frustrated that there is a lack of clear guidance for end users on such a large, now prominent, site.

N.B. I visited Ubuntu sites from the main page, imagining I was a first time user and their support page, i hadn't seen it before, is exactly the inspiration that i would use if i were to create such a page.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

btw a related Brainstorm proposal exists even if it's missing the basic quality (no solutions listed, no link to a discussion thread): http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._of_maemo-org/

Either we consider this the discussion thread of the Brainstorm proposal or either we dismiss the brainstorm proposal and discuss only here. A brainstorm process to discuss whether we put one link or not to the website navigation looks like too complicated.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

so in the rehash, what was the deciding reason that it was a bad idea to make the wiki more visible? what detrimental effects were there expected by making info like the wiki more easy to find? I can understand that there is some reasoning on why they were done that way before, but 'Talk' didn't fit into that reasoning, but it was added because it was useful to do so.

Forums can get link rot very quickly, and searching through thousands of pages to find the latest info can get tiresome so people just get lazy and start new threads. In the wiki there should be only one place for the info ( and under the covers, history and old versions as info changes), and we can take advantage of linking several things together in an easy to find (and read) format.

Lots of people may be using the forums and threads to hold info because they're not aware of an alternative. Things like lists, FAQs, etc I think would be best handled if they were not in a threaded format, often peppered with additional discussion posts that do not provide useful info.

Thoughts?

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

No more thoughts on this subject?

Another example post was left today in the forum where someone is asking for a sticky thread.

Ive changed my sig to promote the wiki at the very least...

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Thanks Cas07, I'll be grabbing your sig and using too if you don't mind.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

To be pedantic: It's the "maemo.org wiki". "Maemo" is the operating system. "maemo.org" (with a leading small "m") is the community website.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

thanks sjgadsby, at least i know you're paying attention <G>.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

I believe i was the instigator one of those times, and the reasoning for the current structure still baffles me. I've never seen a site that buried its wiki like M.O does. I find myself googling things rather than going straight into wiki to look, which is odd when i'm usually starting on T.M.O.

My newbie-to-M.O experience is a few months back now, but the layout paradigm in general was confusing then. I gravitated toward T.M.O because it was the only section that seemed to follow some clear and coherent paradigm.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

I like pedantic ;)

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Unfortunately, the practice is proving the theory wrong :D

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

... which was added in spite of my protests, due to popular demand at the time of the ITT->TMO change.


There was a long debate about this - I wanted a "Support" link on the top bar, and it was decided that there wasn't enough room for it *and* Talk. So the "Get help" button was added on the right with links to "Get help, ask questions, etc" and brings you to http://maemo.org/support. Then there's the wiki as a community documentation database - so it's accessible in maemo.org/community. Then there's developer documentation, which is available on maemo.org/development

My concern is that we in the community see tools, while people who are arriving in Maemo have problems they want to solve, or tasks they want to accomplish.

I'm happy to discuss how we can better bring people from maemo.org to wiki.maemo.org if that's where they should be;, but I'm firmly against adding "wiki" to the top navbar (not least among the reasons: try maemo.org on an N900 with that change, and see what it looks like).

Cheers,
Dave.
I specifically didn't want a Documentation link on the top bar, because documentation doesn't say anything about what the user wants to do.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Yep good points and these were things that i certainly considered too but with no feedback I was unsure what else to suggest.
As I am fairly new to the site, I'm still learning the entire structure and how the pre-N900 members view it.

I have put together a quick banner that I consider covers what a main site should have. Comments would be appreciated.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Personally I think the "Community" part needs restructuring.

Off the cuff, I would do the following at the very least (using Cas07's proposed site header above):

Community
- Wiki
- Talk
- various other 2nd level links for council, events, etc

In fact I see no reason why those can't be drop-down menus.

I'll draw up something more formal and detailed later.

EDIT: I would add an "About" link to Cas07's banner, in lieu of "Intro" on the current one.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

The biggest problem with a Support header, though, is that it's not a primary role for this site. Developers needing support should generally be hitting Forum Nokia and users should hit maemo.nokia.com. We are not an official support channel and I don't think support should be one of our primary target areas.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Fixed that for you. :)

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Well i don't think any normal user of the N900 will make that distinction and i think the Talk forums are proof of that.

There is absolutely nothing mentioning support at maemo.nokia.com so where do users turn?
Just because the site may have originally been intended for the purpose you outline doe not mean that it cannot adapt. With no other high profile support option would it not be sensible to take up the reins and give support to new users so that it shows open source is viable for the mainstream?

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Those came under "various". :p

I think we could do a better job of providing redirection.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

While providing support may not be the primary target of maemo.org, having an easy access to it would enable more people to contribute to the community.

Many who land to maemo.org here for the first time, may want to contribute to this community. But to be able to contribute, proper knowledge is needed on how and where to do it. If this information is hard to access, the initial enthusiasm might die out quickly.

For example, it took me quite some time to find Brainstorm even after someone mentioned in Talk. Bugzilla was even more complicated. Again, I heard first about it in Talk. Wiki... Yes, what Wiki? :rolleyes: I just realised that there was wiki.maemo.org by reading this thread! :p Well, OK, I've been using it for quite a while, but only pages here and there after landing there from different places, mostly from Google.

And about that top banner. Intro?! What it is that? Who needs it? But it must be way more important than wiki... :rolleyes:

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Like this...

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Yes, although I'd probably have it last in the list.

And if we had dropdown menus, we could pull Downloads and Development off and consolidate them into something like this:

OS/Software
- Downloads
- Development
- etc

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Dropdowns with touchscreen devices? Yeah. Right.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Dropdowns for the site banner.

My touchscreen devices have been able to use them just fine on other sites (my online banking, other forums, web email clients...)

So... sarcasm unwarranted. ;)

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

It must be the type of dropdown implementation, as i struggle with some sites on my N900.

Re: Wiki link in main banner
 

Oh, I'm sure. But they're not impossible to use outright.