Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Just a bureaucratic note. This task is now officially part of the November sprint: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Spri...ember_09#Tasks

4 weeks to get it done!

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Wiki_admin, please deal with http://wiki.maemo.org/Category:Artic...d_for_deletion and delete the marked ones?

These articles are also linked to from example Orphaned_pages and I'd like to clean the Orphaned_pages but need better overview.

Thanks!

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Just deleted all the empty pages on that list, the other ones I don't know why they should be deleted, since they have some information.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

maemo.org should not try to beat Nokia and the Wikipedia at describing for first timers what is Maemo, the N900 and previous models, do you agree on this?

Wikipedia pages are just as editable and the more work is put there the more it benefits absoltely everybody.

maemo.nokia.com is already a successful entry point. Millions of excited visitors of the site can't be wrong.

The missions that nobody will accomplish better are:

- For users: apps that won't be at Ovi, community help, peers discussion and power use (whatever is not written in the manual)

- For developers: genuine community developer discussion and support, all the unofficial offering, the development project infrastructure and the Extras distribution channel.

- For everybody: Maemo community unique services e.g. Bugzilla and Brainstorm plus the community involvement from rating apps and news to the QA testing, attending to events as sponsored contributor, being elected to the counil...

To me the goal of the Intro page is to give this big and broad and simple picture to everybody, and the links to know more.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Agreed. Users -> learn about community, pointers on how to listen in, links to tutorials and HOWTOs. Developers -> learn about community, links to places where they can get started with an SDK, writing or porting an application, helping make the platform better.


If there is agreement that the introductory pages in the wiki are better than the "Intro" section, then we could just use those (once they settle to a steady state & meet editorial standards) & have all links from there go into the wiki directly.

maemo.org/intro devinitely needs to cater to developers - but if we can have a big red button with a label "Developers and über-geeks go here!" which brings them somewhere else, that might do.

To me it's important for a new person coming to maemo.org to know in the intro that this is a community project, and be pointed to places where they can join in and listen to the conversation also.

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Good to see a consensus forming on this. As Dave no doubt understands well, there is significant value in "write once, report many" and in that light the first order of business is identifying what/where the data master is and how/where the information it governs should be distributed. Tentacles feeding automated updates from masters to reporting pages is ideal of course but not always immediately doable. That's where the volunteers are so valuable.

But to avoid confusion, maybe it would be helpful for every page replicating info that's governed elsewhere to clearly identify the original source as the master. Maybe that could minimize well-intended but ultimately wasteful efforts of "reinventing the wheel"...

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Note that the current suggestion is that maemo.org/intro *is* already a wiki page.

But let's agree first on the content and then we will agree on the support.

And on how this intro page is linked from the homepage. It has been also proposed to remove the "Intro" entry in the primary navigation bar since there are other candidates more useful for that and such intro could be a first block in the top right column.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Hello, just for information :

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34154

I don't have time myself for creating attractive icons, but I've time for page editing.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

I've been roped into discussions on wiki structuring and front pages at work too (I steamrolled a mediawiki into adoption there), so here's some of the thoughts we've had that probably apply here too.

I know we're discussing the Intro page here, but the structure we choose for Intro can be reused for quite a lot of other things. Think wikipedia portals; the visual semantics are preserved. Let me try to be more specific: it would be great if for example the Qt4 landing page or the Community landing page were structured identically to the Intro and/or Main_Page (am I being subtle enough about thinking those should merge? :) ).

MW does support templates but I distinctly recall not being very impressed, and looking at the wikipedia front page (which history will remember that I shamelessly stole for my mockup) and portal page markup, I see that they only use templates for elements inside the page, not for the whole shebang.

I don't really have that much to say about the design since the mockup speaks better, but once we've found something we like my feeling is it ought to trigger future sprints for thematic areas: a new users portal page for example, a developers portal, etc. Having that would incidentally take some information load off the Intro page; you'd just say "You a developer, gal/fella? Fine, click developer portal" instead of having a whole box talking at developers.

Once the concepts of a wikified front and wikified thematic portals are in place, the big benefit is that we've de facto established a semblance of hierarchical organisation. I say semblance because wiis don't do hierarchy, they only mimic it. But heirarchical data representations are probably easier for a lot of people to navigate through. So carrying the Intro design over to thematic areas helps reinforce this heirarchical wiki representation.

And who knows, you might get endless layers of thematic portals. The Qt propellerheads under development for example side by side with the Gnome hippies and so on.

Sorry if this doesn't sound like it has to do with /Intro; I intend it to have everything with the /Intro page to do. I think my point here is simply that greater ambition is possible with this page. The way Intro gets structured can help improve structure elsewhere.

Whether the Intro link belongs in div id="navigation" up there, my opinion is yes. The sooner people are guided towards areas where they can contribute (wiki) as well as read the better, on principle.

Can we wikify maemo.nokia.com too? :) Please? :)


(holy wall of text; sorry!)