[Grok-dev] Re: Do these pictograms make sense?

Martijn Faassen faassen at startifact.com
Thu May 17 15:11:01 EDT 2007


Sebastian Ware wrote:
> The copywriter within me would cry, but I can consider being pragmatic. :)

Sure, I have an internal copywriter as well, which is why I noticed they 
were all verbs. :)

> The problem with the word "Community" is that it is used in very 
> different ways. Mysql uses it in the sense commercial/community version. 
> Social networking sites use it in the sense of user profiles + 
> interaction -- the people and what they do.

Checking out the websites of some of our nearest competitors:

Django uses 'community'. TurboGears has 'get involved' in the sidebar, 
but not really its own section.

Ruby on Rails has "get involved" (they got 'get *' for everything). They 
also have another more traditional thing with 'community' on top.

Pylons also has 'community'.

Community seems to be pretty commonly used. Since it's clear we're about 
a framework I'm not too worried about comparisons with social networking 
sites. The MySQL 'community version' is a bit more common, but still 
rare enough we don't need to worry about it.

> I still think we should retain a structure that corresponds to the 
> phases the developer goes through. Think of it as developer life cycle. 
> You first evaluate, then learn enough to get started, then you develop 
> applications and at some point he feels the need to share/contribute 
> back to the project.
> 
> In that sense I think community means something else. We are all part of 
> the community so then it would make more sense to organise the site in 
> content type sections:
> 
> Now: Evaluate, Learn, Develop, Share | Download
> 
> Community: Evaluation, Learning, Developer, Community | Download
> 
> Content type: Introduction, Tutorial, Documentation, Resources, 
> Community | Download
> 
> And I am convinced that the benefits of a life cycle approach has many 
> benefits, including indicating to the author what tone the content 
> should have.

What about 'Contribute' instead of 'Share'?

Evaluate, Learn, Develop, Contribute

I'm fine with those entry points but we should also keep obvious 
"content type" style entry points:

About, Tutorial, Documentation, Community, Source

To evaluate someone might check out all 5 of these.

To learn, someone will typically focus on tutorial and documentation, 
but may also consult the source and community.

To develop, you will focus on the documentation (referencing back to the 
tutorial), and sometimes look at the source and the ask the community.

To contribute, you'd need to be heavily engaged with the community and 
know the areas of documentation and source where you want to contribute.

Since 'download' is so important always keep a download link next to the 
entry points.

> Anyway. In the next suggestion you will understand what I am talking 
> about, and we can see if it all makes sense. (sometimes the code has to 
> do the talking... :) )

:)

Regards,

Martijn



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