[Theforum] Move!

Michele Foster michele at wordpro.on.ca
Wed Feb 6 17:49:24 CST 2002


Hi Isaac :)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Isaac Forman" <isaac at triplezero.com.au>


|
| I'm looking at the evolt.org 2001 Survey Results for WE0:
|
| http://members.evolt.org/djc/evolt/survey/Summary_sect3.html
|
|
| BTW, for those not aware, WRT = with regard/respect to. And BTW = by the
| way. (happy Madhu?! ;p)
|
| >From question 11 results, do you think it's safe to assume that our
redesign
| plans should cater, primarily, for people who visit around once every 3-10
| days (average of once a week)?

Tough call ... personally, I'd like to see a front page that caters to all
the great things that evolt.org offers .. not just the articles.  I'd like
to simplify the user's experience .. but at the same time not have our great
content suffer from lack of exposure.

Are we seriously looking at an evolt.org HOME page .. that leads to the
different areas of evolt.org?  IOW, the existing weo site, will not be the
front page?  A few recent articles, yes, but the "guts" of weo exists on its
own?  More friendly, more intuitive, encompassing ALL of evolt, not just the
articles?

Also, one question I meant to ask .. and forgot .. are we taking into
consideration allowing articles (and tips) in more than one category for
this version?  Or are we re-designing the site with the intent of not
changing the DB scheme drastically at this time?  (I'm sure several will
have different opinions on this .. its something we should discuss tho.) Are
we going to v3.0 now?

|
| >From question 12 results, is it safe to assume that WRT content, we need
to
| encourage how-to articles firstly, and also make WEO a good resource for
| opinion and also the place to go to find out what's happening* on the Web
| which would be useful to web developers?

Fair assumptions I think.  Also brings up the recategorizing of our content
into more useful categories, i.e. Code -> PHP, ASP, CF, etc.  Focus on
development areas.  I was rather surprised at commentary and news being so
high.


|
| WRT to question 14, and some of its responses, we might look to provide
| information on why rating articles is useful for everyone. Also, provide
| more differentiation between the article body and the other elements
| (ratings, comments, etc). Agreed?

Yes, absolutely .. the article view could still use some work.  It might be
a worthwhile exercise for us (everyone / anyone) to investigate other sites
and find different examples, bring them back to the group so we can discuss
what works and what doesn't.  When I was reading Morbus' article on O'Reilly
the other day, a few of us said that we disliked the way in which they did
their comments.

|
| WRT to question 17, we might like to point out that many emails to thelist
| are a great basis for an article. It can be hard to sit down and write an
| article, but it's very easy to start an email to thelist and have it end
up
| as a comprehensive tutorial or rant! We might want to make a defined
effort
| to step up our "This would make a great article!" offlist emailing... It
| seems that time is the primary factor WRT article submission.

Yes, as I expected.  The 17.8% that said they didn't know they could is also
significant, IMHO. And, hopefully that part we can address in the redesign
.. making it more intuitive, etc.

Collaboration on articles .. much like the idea of collaborating on building
projects on meo .. is going to become an important part of evolt .. in my
opinion of course.  I think its a need we need to address further, and
brainstorm some ideas that might work.  We do very well in many forums, but
I think there's still more we could do .. by bringing people together.  Just
additional thoughts.


|
| * I have long thought that our News category should be restructured,
perhaps
| into something more blog-styled, so as to encourage more snippets for
| regular uses of evolt.org. It may become an opportunity for people to
| contribute, despite not having the time to write up a full, feature
article.
| It's probably a bit hard to explain, but I look forward to coming up with
a
| design concept that shows everyone what I mean.
|

I am so disliking of this .. yet I hear more and more individuals mentioning
it.  Let's give it some serious consideration.

While we're talking about it .. I'd like also to suggest that we ditch the
"Suggestions" category on weo.

And .. I'd like to see the Web Business category added .. ;)

And .. it looks like we're good to go for the 'black-listed' categories not
to have ratings .. so, you'll need to take that into consideration too.  :)


Michele





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