Re: "What is GNOME?"

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Jeff Fortin Tam <nekohayo gmail com> wrote:
...
> Methinks it might be time to retire the "discover GNOME 3" concept and
> turn it into "What is GNOME?" page. It's not 2011 anymore, it's not like
> we're still comparing ourselves to GNOME 2 :)

I think it's important to provide an overview of the actual UX that we
provide. We never had that in the GNOME 2 days, and the lack of
user-facing information was something that people frequently
complained about.

There are different ways you can answer the question "what is GNOME?"
One is to talk about the technology. The other is to talk about user
experience. Another still is to talk about values and goals (Mozilla
is the example that always comes up here). The latter is something
that we've increasingly tried to do in the Engagement Team.

I agree that the current about us page could be better. There's too
much text, and it's a bit of a grab bag. And I agree that it should
talk more about the technology (the technologies page that I recently
started will be useful in this respect). That said, it doesn't have to
be one thing or the other - I think we can talk about technology, and
user experience, and values. A page with a clearer structure would
help here

One final point - something we've tried to do with the current page (I
don't think we've been entirely successful here, but that's another
story) is emphasise the impact that GNOME has outside of our project.
One of our hallmarks is that we work across the stack, fixing bugs as
we find them, in order to create something cohesive. Not only is this
something that differentiates us from other Free Software projects
(good thing), but it is also a way to emphasise our value to potential
partners. While I'm certainly not opposed to saying more about what
our tech actually is and does, I wouldn't want to lose this aspect of
our identity in the process.

I seem to be poking at the website right now, so I'll see if I can
come up with designs for a better About Us page... (no promises
though!)

Allan