[Pdweb] Proposal wrt. guide new users with silk gloves

Georg Holzmann grhPD at gmx.at
Mon Feb 26 19:13:07 CET 2007


Hallo!

I want to reactivate this discussion, so that it wasn't for nothing ... ;)

So on what did we decide now?
Can we at least open the community folder for members ? (well, I would 
be for all puredata.org but not the main page)

Then the members would have write privilegs in their home and community 
folder.

LG
Georg


>>> I've been thinking about how to best and with less changes to the 
>>> current website make the into-tour to Pd land feel more like trip to 
>>> Bhutan; or Nangijala if you prefer.
>>>
>>> My focus was fist to give a more detailed explanation of what 
>>> opportunities there are with respect to getting Pd. The fist easy 
>>> step was to add extra information to the downloads section (and maybe 
>>> rename it to "getting Pd"), but i've fund that it might be better to 
>>> do some more through out chances to the site, which i think will be a 
>>> good solution in the long run.
>>
>> I think "downloads" is appropriate since most software pages use that 
>> term for the page where you get the software, from my experience.
> 
> Ok. Gentoo, fx, uses 'get gentoo'. But the reason for changing it wasn't 
> that, as mush as it was to hint more insight. It can be "downloads" for 
> me, it not the end of the world.
> 
> 
>>> 2) some explicit examples that can be downloaded, much like the 
>>> examples on the processing site. This have been discussed before, 
>>> where the conclusion more or less were, that having both a curated 
>>> showroom regularly updated and a more alive share-your-work-section 
>>> on the website would be more desirable then a static example section 
>>> just. I still agree. But i'd rather have a static example section 
>>> then nothing. And it seam more likely that such think cold happen 
>>> then the other. And then it will be more in line with this About 
>>> section, it could use more digestible examples, which would let fx a 
>>> showroom use it's potential to have a more advanced and arty focus.
>>
>> I think this should be the showroom.  We should strongly encourage 
>> people to include the sources.  It could also be a question for the 
>> curator at the time.  If I was curating, I think I would only include 
>> works that release at least some of the sources.
> 
> I'd like such showroom too. But a section with easy examples related to 
> the About page i think would be a good start. It could be seen as 
> redundant given the material in the help browser, but displaying a few 
> easy things in a webpage i think will fertilizes downloading Pd in the 
> fist place. Again, it's not the end of the world, and if there at some 
> point will be a showroom, the examples section could just end with a 
> pointer to that showroom for more material.
> 
>>>  3) a page describing the goods in the Pd shop (vanilla, pd-extended, 
>>> devel, externals, abstractions, pddp, etc). This section in 
>>> particular i think new users would benefit from knowing from the 
>>> start. i wish i did.
>>
>> I don't think newbies need to know about the subsections "externals", 
>> "abstractions", "pddp", etc.  But yes to the vanilla/pd-extended/devel 
>> discussion.  I tried to explain on the downloads page, but I suppose 
>> it could be made clearer.
> 
> My newbie experience is that i wanted to know about these thinks before 
> i started patching. I don't think it should be the fist thing displayed, 
> but there are users to whom it matters how things could put together - 
> or how things are organized. As for abstractions, i think even more 
> new'ish users like to know about it.
> 
> 
>>> The documentation section. There will be pointers from that about 
>>> section 3) to appropriate pages or parts of the documentation 
>>> section. Fx. about how to build Pd or externals one self. I think it 
>>> would be nice to have a sub-section of the documentation dedicated to 
>>> building. That is move the general building stuff out of the dev 
>>> section and into the user docs.
>>
>> "user docs" should be newbie focused, but build stuff could go in an 
>> "advanced" section I suppose.  But generally, building software is 
>> categorized as "developer" stuff, from my experience.  To me, it is 
>> very important that we do not needlessly create our own categories for 
>> these things.  There is a pretty broad consensus for how to label and 
>> categorize these things on websites which I think we should follow.
> 
> Ok. I don't want to create new categories. It's not that. It's just  
> that in this particular situation the line between building as a user 
> and building as a developer is thin. It does makes sense to build stuff 
> as a user, as it does makes sense to bug report as a user. I might be 
> off the bat.  Anyways, it's not the end of the world to me where the 
> info is placed.
> 
> 
> 
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