Re: gnome app pages (was confusingly Gnome Software Map)

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi, Quim!

On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 23:49:20 +0200
Quim Gil <qgil desdeamericaconamor org> wrote:

> First I want to note that many user will drop in a product page
> directly via Google if we do things right.
> 

This is excactly what I'm worried about about: It's not a problem
to move several pages in Google's hitlist for the search term
"Evolution". However, it will be nearly impossible to get Evolution
homepage into the top list for a search term like 'Email client' when a
part of the crowd links the homepage and the other one links its
product page.

When I say "product page" I mean something similar to Jeff's suggestion:
one, two or maybe three pages that have no more than one paragraph of
text about a particular application.


> Second, we will also have developers, sysadmins and decision-makers or
> consultants with a tech profile wanting to know more about GNOME and
> taking the time needed to gather the information and have their own
> opinion about the decision that brought them there.
> 

Yes and No. 

No, because they don't mind about some set of feature that makes
Evolution different to other mail clients. They don't want to know how
Nautilus handles file management; they expect file management to work!
They don't need a wgo/apps/nautilus page. Those who have very
special questions can easily check the project's homepage. No problem.

However, when they google for something like evolution, they may get
two hits that look like a homepage, and 50% of them are going to
waste their time with the wrong one!

But yes, they do need some more information: They wanna know how
successful GNOME is in the market! If you care to look in the former
navigation proposal, I had quite a few points in the About section to
prove we are successful: The inital About index page lists some of our
successes. There was a page planned what others say, listing quotes from
journalists. We could have included a list of Awards -- unfortunately
we seem to have won no awards (and a list of number 2 places looks,
well, funny), so we better show a page about our largest deployments and
case studies, instead. However, this is the information they are
looking for!

Dave Neary thankfully provided a quote that summerizes the main reason
of institutional users very well: Concerning their choice of GNOME, Juan
Conde, the director of the Guadalinex project, said:

 "We took the choice for two main reasons, one was [...] was the fact
that our neighbour region, [...] Extremadura, had already chosen
GNOME."

 http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/GnomeTestimonials#Andalucia

 In other words: The best selling argument for a desktop is that
everybody else uses it! This is like driving on the left
or on the right site of the road: It doesn't matter which site you're
using as long as everybody uses the same side! And this is still the
most objective reason to choose a desktop for nearly everybody.

 This is the impression we need to create: that we're cool and that we
matter! Some product pages with rather detailed descriptions don't help
here. They are just wasting everybody's time.

> 
> > I'm not saying, some more pages to describe GNOME's products make no
> > sense; just in case some people are *really* curious -- but these
> > pages are not *that* important.
> 
> If this few people are responsible of few big decisions, these pages
> are important.
> 

When I say 'product pages', I'm talking about the mockup I've send. Or
maybe some larger version using Jeff's proposal of splitting it into
desktop, dev. platform and embedded. Somebody just needs sents a list of
points that these texts should address.

The product pages I'm talking about have a short paragraph of text about
the most important applications, only; not about all kinds of stuff
like gcalculator that appears in the list of the "software map" which
started this discussion.

I mean you should know best: IIRC you wrote a blog entry about the
feature differences of Firefox and Epiphany: It was a short list
of points. To some people, these points may matter, but to the majority
they don't.

Most importantely: An institutional user won't care about these
small differences when thinking about a 10.000 desktops deployment!
They will simple use Firefox because the chances are rather high than
many people are already familiar with it.

Or just check gedit's homepage please: Its front section for users is
already small -- why should we copy the information into the wgo
content? Nobody's going to reason a 10.000 computer deployment on the
features of an editor; and nobody's going throught all your product
pages to make a list of the most important features.

Of course, we could extend the text somehow: Maybe that will end
into something like the apple/safari page: I've spend 30 seconds --
rather much for today's attention spans -- on the page; I still don't
know whether this is an RSS reader or a browser. And I've found no
download link. This is all I can remember, and this safari thingy
didn't look particular exciting. I also don't know whether I get this
safari thingy automatically if I buy a Mac. It might have been
buried in the text desert over there. In other words, the page appears
to be useless for its viewers.

Don't let us waste our time with something similar, please!

> 
> No, we haven't. We will have an agreement soon though, and you can
> help getting a better agreement. We are not going to look for the
> perfect list of use cases nor the perfect menu structure, we will be
> happy finding better solutions than the ones wgo currently offers.
> 

I don't critize that the proposal is not finished; I just wondering
whether it makes sense to discuss content questions. Jeff's suggestion
seems to be a content question: without a draft, this is hard
to discuss any further.


Cheers,
Claus