Hi Brynn,
Glad you are working on this! You've posted a lot of stuff to go through.
On Fri, 2014-11-14 at 12:17 -0700, Brynn wrote:
Hi Friends, As a brief backstory, Martin had contacted me some months ago, asking if I had any ideas for the new website which he'd been developing, and we had some general discussion. That was before the "new" site launched. After it launched, I had some specific suggestions, and contacted him again. He suggested I could use the django editor on the staging site, and create some sample pages, showing the changes I would make. Part of my suggestion was to incorporate some of the wiki content in the site, and that's when he explained to me about how the wiki should now be only for development topics, and most of the user content should either be on the website, or in official documentation. That's when splitting the FAQ into 2 faqs -- a user faq for the website, and a developer faq for the wiki, came up.
Good idea!
So now I have those proposed new pages finished, and as well, theFAQ has been overhauled, and split in two. And below is the info. I'm not quite sure how the process works, for approving these kinds of things, but Martin said to post to the dev mailing list. So here are the results of all my work.
Oh, I should also say that after I started all this work, I noticedthis bug report, suggesting some of these changes: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape-web/+bug/1274098 I still haven't figured out exactly how bug reports are handled, or who decides on the Importance, Status, etc, so I just added a comment that I was working on some of it. OK, here we go.
1 - My proposed new Community page: http://staging.inkscape.org/en/brynntest/ (Now includes all Inkscape forums, which are part of the community.)
-- -> —
Good to list the various social networks... but the only one really active is G+. (Twitter had one tweet in 2014, Facebook not much more.) I would move Twitter and Facebook to the list below. Planet Inkscape is mostly just the tutorials now so maybe move that to the list. (At least we got in cleaned up recently.)
How about "We are social! Join us on Google+, on IRC, or on one of our mailing lists."
Change: "Official and Development Discussion" -> "End User and Developer Discussions" (Official sounds a bit over-the-top.)
Also remove "Official" in "Official Inkscape Google Plus page.
2 - Since the listing of external galleries was so long, I put them on a new page. It's found via text link, in the 2nd sentence in the Gallery section of Community page. This is that page: http://staging.inkscape.org/en/brynn-community-pg2/
They all came from the old wiki Galleries page, which was disorganized and quite outdated, with ~ 40% bitrotted links and several spammish entries, which weren't even Inkscape related. (I'd give a link, except I deleted all those entries, after moving them to this page, on Martin's instruction.) This new list is more organized, and current. Should the page be approved, I intend to keep it up to date and organized.
Good to get this cleaned up!
A good goal in copy-editing is to see if you can rewrite something just as clear but shorter:
"You can find our own gallery here. Below are many more places to find Inkscape created content."
A second pass at making the entries uniform (e.g. capitalizing the first letter of each entry) might make it look a bit more professional. Have you checked on the quality of each listed site? We don't need an exhaustive list, just one that give some good examples of what can be done with Inkscape.
3 - After moving the list of forums (from Learn page) to Community page, the Learn page would now look like this: http://staging.inkscape.org/en/brynns-learn2/ Very short page, and somewhat boring, imo.
The Tutorial entry could use some copy-editing:
"Tutorials — Links to a variety of tutorials including the interactive tutorials from inside Inkscape (Help->Tutorials) in a form suitable for printing."
To make this more interesting, it could be merged with the tutorial page.
4 - To make it more interesting, I added sort of a teaser, using a bit of content from some of the pages. That proposed new Learn page looks like this: http://staging.inkscape.org/en/brynns-learn-page/
Ah, this is probably a better start than the page in 3.
You don't need to explain "Frequently Asked Questions", get rid of everything from the dash.
Break the tutorial section into two parts: Official and External, merging the tutorial page.
However, what I think would be better, is to use some kind of imagery. Maybe we could find, or someone could draw for us, some clipart. Actually, for a website which promotes a graphics program, inkscape.org seems *to me* practically devoid of graphics (except of course for the front page and gallery). I think it would be nice to incorporate some Inkscape graphics on each page -- either as clipart, that is designed to help with the flow of the site (sort of like a theme, I guess); or just have an image on each page (maybe a script could call up random images from the gallery). But I'm getting off track. Just a thought :-)
Yes, more images would be nice, but they need to be of high quality.
5 - Here is my proposed new FAQ for Inkscape Users: http://staging.inkscape.org/en/brynns-user-faq/
It's been seriously overhauled -- several items deleted from the original, which are no longer needed; another several new ones added; re-organized; and a TON of useless html code was removed.
Note that I changed the numbering system, to more of an outline style, because I think it looks better. But I did a bit of research, and found a way to keep the same numbering system, and still look better. It's just that it involves editing the CSS/style sheet, and will take me some experimenting to get it right. So I decided to use the outline style, and I can work on the other system, if there is an outcry for the old numbering system.
Looks good.
There are still 2 issues left, before the user faq is complete.
5a - There are 5 bitrotted links, which need to be updated. The list is attached: "bitrotted-links-in-InksFAQ.txt" In a previous message, Bryce said he thought he could track them down. (Actually, only 2 for the user faq. 3 are for the dev faq.)
5b - 5 wiki articles which need to be put into some kind of documentation. The list is attached: "2b-documented-for-InksFAQ.txt" I'm still not clear how documentation is handled, so I can only provide the list. Unfortunately, I don't have the technical knowledge to write any of them myself -- except for just copying and pasting somewhere else. I assume they would need to be reviewed and updated, for accuracy, and none of those topics I happen to know, inside-out.
(Related to this, I would be glad to make a listing of all user-related content that I can find, in the wiki. I've already had a look at a lot of it. But since I don't understand some of it, I would need some suggestions from more knowledgeable folks, about what to do with it (i.e. delete, put in documentation, or leave in the wiki for devs). But let me know. I'll be glad to help with any of that, if I can.)
6 - After removing the user-related parts, this is the new proposed FAQ for Inkscape Developers: http://staging.inkscape.org/en/brynn-dev-faq/ I used the django editor, but I guess it would ultimately belong in the wiki. I'll be glad to transfer to the wiki, if it's approved. Just lmk :-)
Get rid of the General section, no need to duplicate what's in the user FAQ.
Note that I was not able to update any of the developer topics section, because I'm just not knowledgeable on those.
As it turns out, 3 of the 5 bitrotted links, in the attached list, are for the developer faq. It may be that they are no longer needed; I just don't know. But that's all that is outstanding, to complete it.
Any and all comments or suggestions are welcomed, and especially any typos. I must have proof-read 4 or 5 times, in the end, but I still could have missed some.
I appreciate the opportunity to contribute more to the Inkscape project than just answering messages in forums. And if any of my limited skills can be useful, I'll be glad to continue to help.
Again, thanks for tackling this project!
Tav