[Theforum] Design (was: Demographics)

[Dean Mah]

Madhu Menon writes:

> 1) We should evolve a format for critique requests that people can
> fill it appropriately. Fields should include things like "target
> os/browser/resolution", "audience", "site objectives", "Critique
> severity: Soft/Balanced/Harsh/Take no prisoners" and most
> importantly, what people want critiqued (if a person doesn't want
> his Javascript looked over, that's his right.) This might help in
> restricting the discussion to relevant topics only.

That's an interesting idea.  I don't know how we would enforce it
though.  With people coming and going it would be a constant
re-education of our members on the correct format.  Might work though.

Awhile back, admin considered doing a monthly/weekly site critique of
a major public site on thelist and then create an article out of it.
This way people would be free to be as harsh as they wanted and
hopefully technical issues with the site would have already been
addressed.  There wouldn't be a point in talking about the backend
when there isn't a member of the implemention team on thelist.  Maybe
this would drive more design related threads and spinoffs.


> 2) I'd like www.evolt.org to be more than a place for articles. I'd
> like it to evolve into a proper community. I'm thinking along the
> lines of one (or more) "guides" for each section of evolt. These
> guides would be responsible for writing articles, posting links to
> interesting articles on the Net (weblog style), and perhaps taking
> the best threads in their section from thelist and pointing to
> them. Also, if some really tough problem is solved on thelist, the
> guides would take various member posts, coagulate them into a "tip"
> style article and post them on weo. Let's get some moreover.com news
> feeds set up as well. Think About.com Unfortunately, most of us have
> day jobs, and this will turn out to be a full-time job by
> itself. That's why I think each section should have 4 or 5 guides
> (if possible) to handle the workload. For example, Martin, Javier,
> and I could do the "usability" section (example only; I'm not
> committing on their behalf).

A variant of this was also considered on admin in an adhoc manner.
Usually it would be admin people suggesting to thelist members to post
their question and responses received in an article on the site.  It
usually turned out that no one had the time to followup.  The hardest
part is getting the volunteers with enough time to consistently cull
the data.  It's a good idea though.


Dean