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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

I'd like to see the site simplified, and have a curated exhibition  
section.

.hc

On Feb 26, 2007, at 1:13 PM, Georg Holzmann wrote:

> 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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