[OWW-Discuss] OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity feature?

[Jason Morrison]

I definitely agree with the concern - i.e. looking at some random page (say
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Bone_Marrow_Macrophages), it is difficult to
determine who is responsible for the content, and I get no branding
association to OWW.

The one-time pop sounds like a good way to address this.  Does it occlude
the content the user is looking for, or is it in-line text (say, above the
article/talk/edit/history tabs, or between these and the H1)?  Occluding or
blocking or significantly pushing down the desired content could be quite
irritating for a user, but a subtle approach would likely address the issue
while not keeping users from their desired content.  Also, be careful that
spiders do not receive this pop, as that might hurt indexing.

It might also help to put "OpenWetWare" and a tagline on the upper-left wiki
badge image, much like http://en.wikipedia.org/images/wiki-en.png (and
Julius' suggested "Join OWW" button right next to or under this?)

Jason

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 4:54 PM, Austin Che <austin at csail.mit.edu> wrote:

>
> > Once they click on the link to go to OWW, Barry pointed out that when
> they
> > land on one of our pages other than Main_Page or one of a dozen or fewer
> > other pages, there's nothing on the top of the page or in the sidebar to
> > identify the site. We become anonymous. The viewer has to scroll to the
> > bottom of the page to find a small link for "about openwetware.org".
>
>     I think people are familiar enough with looking at the url in
>    their browser to know what site they're on. Also, the title of
>    every page clearly includes OpenWetWare. Every browser I know
>    includes this as part of the browser window title.
>
> > Our first attempt to address the problem will go online soon. We're
> adding a
> > one-time display of the text from the OWW main page telling users who we
> are
> > and inviting them to join. Once they have a cookie from our site, they
> will
> > never see it again. If they visit once and see a link that's not
> relevant to
> > them, the nxt time they visit and get wowed by our info, they may not
> > connect the fact they found value at OWW and thus fail to look around on
> the
> > site.
>
>     This seems like a nice idea to try.
>
> > Does anyone have any thoughts about other ways to address this? Even in
> UMS,
> > every page has a banner identifying the site as OWW.
>
>     I don't think this is a problem.
>
> > We can add a banner to the skin over the white area of the page. This
> banner
> > would not ever be displayed on hosted lab's sites since the dewikify app
> > doesn't export the skins. I'm no artists. If anyone has a simple and
> clear
> > way to express who we are to visitors in an unobtrusive but clear way,
> I'd
> > love to hear about it.
>
>     I don't think we should waste screen space for banners advertising
>    who we are. Anyone who cares (i.e. if there's useful content and
>    they're looking for more) will have no problem finding the main
>    page.
>
> --
> Austin Che           <austin at csail.mit.edu>          (617)253-5899
> _______________________________________________
> OpenWetWare Discussion Mailing List
> discuss at openwetware.org
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-discuss
>



-- 
Jason Morrison
jason.p.morrison at gmail.com
http://jayunit.net
(585) 216-5657
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