[OWW-Discuss] Front page. It needs more than it has.Anysuggestions?
Steven J. Koch
sjkoch at unm.edu
Tue Apr 15 12:09:06 EDT 2008
Looks like I'm in the minority opinion, but I feel strongly that main page
should not be dewikified. First, there may be unintended consequences. It
always seems like there won't be, but there always are. For example,
sometimes (rarely) I'll type in the address on my cell phone and then use
the search box (which won't be there). Second, it may have the consequence
of confusing people who ARE specifically looking for a lab wiki. This was
me a little over a year ago--I was very happy to find something that looked
like Wikipedia. I may not have joined if I found a main page that wasn't
obviously a wiki. Of course, there may be more people unlike me, who have
been turned away, this in unknown. But as time goes on, I would think the
general scientific community will become more acquainted with Wikipedia and
therefore wikis.
Another thought in regards to my second point. Google decided to wipe
"wiki" from their vocabulary. Maybe I'm in the minority opinion here too,
but I find that a poor decision. Back when I joined OWW, I also signed up
to be notified when jotspot was accepting customers again. A year later, I
finally was notified and I was not at all attracted to Google Sites as an
application for my lab wiki. Whether or not Google made the right decision,
it does seem that their interface is geared towards people who don't want to
see wiki code. There's no way we can compete with Google as far as general
technical features go. But we can compete in terms of the community focused
on open science and smart technical features like Lab Notebook 2.0. OWW's
mission is in the same vein as Wikipedia's mission and they share the same
wiki engine. So, I think a general guiding principle should be to emulate
what Wikimedia does. This should save a ton on workload and I think also
make sense to the majority of the OWW community and potential new members.
--Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: oww-discuss-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:oww-discuss-bounces at mit.edu] On
Behalf Of Barry Canton
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 7:46 AM
To: julius.lucks
Cc: discuss at openwetware.org
Subject: Re: [OWW-Discuss] Front page. It needs more than it
has.Anysuggestions?
I'm also in favor of getting rid of most of the the wikiness from the main
page.
On 4/15/08, julius.lucks <julius.lucks at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with Jason's points - Julius
>
>
>
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> On Apr 14, 2008, at 8:52 PM, Jason Kelly wrote:
>
> > agree with steve that we should keep it simple. Also, I think the
> > main page is mostly used by new users, I assume most regular users
> > never go there, so we could gear the page even more to new users then
> > it already is.
> >
> > e.g. a prominent getting started button / prominent join button (not
> > just a link buried in text), a search box in the middle somewhere,
> > etc.
> >
> > might even o with a totally "non-wiki" main page (e.g. lose the side
> > bar and the top bar) as well.
> >
> > thanks,
> > jason
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 11:42 PM, Ilya Sytchev <ilyas at mit.edu> wrote:
> >> Also, I've removed the heading "Main Page" from the Main Page. I
> >> think
> >> it looks cleaner this way but if you disgree I can revert this change
> >> very easily.
> >>
> >> Ilya
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Reshma Shetty wrote:
> >>> Great work! Looks much better.
> >>>
> >>> Two minor comments...
> >>>
> >>> 1) I'd get rid of the blog name on the RSS feed (if that's
> >>> possible).
> >>> I think it is redundant for the feed on the main page. The time of
> >>> the post is likely also unnecessary (but keep the date). But if
> >>> this
> >>> requires additional recoding of the extension, then skip it.
> >>> 2) I am seeing some faint blue lines around each feed element ...
> >>> not
> >>> sure why ... perhaps some CSS oddity?
> >>>
> >>> I agree with Steve re the main page. I prefer a streamlined main
> >>> page
> >>> ... especially if it helps with load time (which was quite slow ...
> >>> due at least in part to an unnecessarily large main page image ...
> >>> not
> >>> sure about now?)
> >>>
> >>> team is the email list for the OWW board + full-time OWWers ...
> >>> Bill,
> >>> Lorrie and Ricardo. All folks on team are also on discuss.
> >>>
> >>> -Reshma
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 10:59 PM, Steve Koch
> >>> <koch.steve at kochlab.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I can come up with ideas, but my opinion is that it looks pretty
> >>>> good right
> >>>> now and more stuff may dilute effectiveness of stuff that is
> >>>> there. That's
> >>>> just my opinion, but brings up another question. What kind of
> >>>> metric would
> >>>> show how effective the main page is? Maybe this has been figured
> >>>> out
> >>>> already?
> >>>>
> >>>> What's "team at openwetware.org?"
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> From: oww-discuss-bounces at mit.edu
[mailto:oww-discuss-bounces at mit.edu
> >>>> ] On
> >>>> Behalf Of Bill F
> >>>> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 8:50 PM
> >>>> To: discuss at openwetware.org; team at openwetware.org
> >>>> Subject: [OWW-Discuss] Front page. It needs more than it has.
> >>>> Anysuggestions?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> We've pared it down to the point that it's getting pretty
> >>>> 'minimalistic'.
> >>>>
> >>>> Any ideas on what to do to start bulking it up a bit?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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--
Barry Canton
Endy Lab
Biological Engineering Division
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tel.:(617) 401-7320 (Grand Central)
Email1: bcanton at mit.edu
Email2: bcanton at gmail.com
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