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List:       kde-www
Subject:    Re: The KDE website landscape
From:       Sebastian =?utf-8?q?K=C3=BCgler?= <sebas () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-03-20 20:14:30
Message-ID: 200603202114.31027.sebas () kde ! org
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Hi Martin,

On Monday 20 March 2006 19:49, Hubipete wrote:
> I thought about the KDE websites and I have written a little text about it
> (-->below). This are things I think are really needed for future.
> Cheers Martin
>
> The KDE website landscape

Jup, the content is a mess and needs being consolidated.

> kde.org - a portal to the community

Agree.

> dot.kde.org - KDE news aggregation
> dot.kde.org is the central pool for all news related to KDE. An aggregation
> of all the application and modul news is very useful to track the events in
> KDE land. The Dot is not longer only maintained by the special dot authors
> because they need to rewrite news again which is a waste of time.
> dot.kde.org should also become a contact point for further news providers
> so that they don't have look for news in the deep ocean of KDE sites.

We're also planning for a press channel which serves as primary information 
point for journalists. The dot is in my eyes more a community news sites.

> Modul sites

I think not every module has necessarily a modul site. It's more that people 
who figured a certain part needed a website, they did it. That's how it 
usually works: Something itches enough for someone to scratch it. She then 
creates a website. Sadly, often they're abandoned, the great number of sites 
certainly doesn't help there.

> Application sites

Same as above, the real problem I will explain later on.

> Educational portal
> There have been attemps to create a site with tutorials and howtos for
> developers: http://www.fruitsalad.org/uofkde/ and http://lyceum.bddf.ca/ .
> KDE needs such a site because the technologies' tutorials are spread around
> at the moment.
> This educational portal is the point where people who want to help KDE
> start learning all KDE related technics. It is the only one of this kind.

This idea has been dropped, AFAIK due to lack of manpower.

> Technology sites
> With KDE4 there are coming some nice projects like Phonon, Plasma and
> Solid. These are parts of the libraries or even an own library. They
> implement very nice features and are interesting as a technology
> themselves. So it is important that they have a representation for their
> own as they are not covered by the modul sites. KDE printing support is an
> other example for this kind of library. The website serves the developer
> rather than the user because the former needs information about the
> technologies used by his application. A technology site includes a design
> description and project related developer information which is often stored
> in the DESIGN and README files in SVN at the moment.

It's also part of the marketing strategy, marketing Solid, Phonon, Plasma and 
all that goodness as the "pillars of KDE4". Later on, they'll be useful to 
explain KDE technology and may replace other bits of the whole webpresence.

> Conclusion
> In general there are three major goals for the future KDE sites: being more
> informative, being better structured and being more visual pleasant. To
> make it clear with an example: the changelogs. These are really important
> to inform about a new KDE version but KDE fails to give an easy to read and
> visual pleasant overview for users. There should be a guide with several
> articles covering the new features with nice screenshots and descritions.
> GNOME has it, so why don't we...?

I agree. Here's the problem though.

I'm afraid that people are aware of the issues you're outlining. Updating 
webpages is obviously not the favourite activity of a lot of people. 
Sometimes it's easier to just write new content (most people have lost sight 
long time ago anyway, so they're not even aware of information being 
duplicated). That leads to duplicate information on the one hand, outdated 
pages on the other hand. It also certainly does not give the user any 
guidance.

Another problem in the past has been that people tend to give a lot of 
critique on the websites, but when it comes to fixing it, no one steps up. 
Critisizing others has been much more popular than doing the work.

What actually is needed are people that are dedicated to help making KDE's 
webpresence worthwhile again, to fix all those issues you're mentioned and to 
put time and effort into it. Honestly, we're short on those people. Reworking 
KDE's webpresence is a major undertaking, and it's probably not the most 
rewarding one either. There are hundreds, if not thousands of webpages that 
need being reviewed, merged, thrown away and copied over. After having a 
framework that is.

The good news, however, is: A team of people who also believe that we need to 
do something about the websites has come together and is beginning to work on 
the webpages, the result hopefully being a consolidated webpresence, 
informative, beautiful and probably most important: Maintainable and actively 
being maintained.

What I like is your idea and concept. Get back to me if you want to be one of 
the people that make it happen.
-- 
sebas

 http://www.kde.nl | http://vizZzion.org |  GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9 
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deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin, 1759


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