[OWW-Discuss] I vote for putting text under OWW logo & join buttonRE: Oww-discuss Digest, Vol 18, Issue 27
Steven J. Koch
sjkoch at unm.edu
Mon Mar 31 17:27:18 EDT 2008
Sorry, I got a little lost in the discussion, so I may have missed some
ideas. I want to second a couple motions:
1. Text under the wonderful OWW DNA handshake logo, similar to Wikipedia
(title plus motto) is a great idea for branding.
2. A Prominent / Permanent "Join OWW" would be nice. I too have to search
when referring people.
3. I am hesitant to endorse the one-time "new visitor" addition. It does
sound fine as described, but I'd vote for erring on the side of caution when
automatically modifying the page content. A different idea would be to add
an OWW "motto" to the title bar (again similar to Wikipedia), instead of
just "OpenWetWare" as it is now.
-----Original Message-----
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Subject: Oww-discuss Digest, Vol 18, Issue 27
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Today's Topics:
1. Recently visited pages (Tom Knight)
2. Re: OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity feature?
(Jason Morrison)
3. Re: OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity feature? (Bill F)
4. Re: OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity feature? (Bill F)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:08:30 -0400
From: Tom Knight <tk at csail.mit.edu>
Subject: [OWW-Discuss] Recently visited pages
To: discuss at openwetware.org
Message-ID: <86c53ac85998da3b9417dab1030d0442 at csail.mit.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Other highly linked sites maintain a list of the last half-dozen or so
pages visited on the site by you as a click menu on the page. This
seems like it would be a very welcome navigation feature in OWW. I
often find myself wanting to switch quickly between several pages.
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:09:07 -0400
From: "Jason Morrison" <jason.p.morrison at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [OWW-Discuss] OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity
feature?
To: "discuss at openwetware.org" <discuss at openwetware.org>
Message-ID:
<8ba0586d0803311409l786ded76y950d4d9cf5aef43a at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
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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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:13:29 -0400
From: "Bill F" <bill.altmail at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [OWW-Discuss] OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity
feature?
To: "Austin Che" <austin at csail.mit.edu>
Cc: "discuss at openwetware.org" <discuss at openwetware.org>
Message-ID:
<26428aaa0803311413l89eb4a5g5ca79f6f05b0ccad at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
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.
>
I'm not pointing this out from a correctness perspective. I have no evidence
to dispute or corroborate your point regarding most people. I'm only me and
even that's hard for me to track on occasion. We can look into this but I'm
wary of making a generalization based upon what I experience.
>
> > 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.
>
I'm not worried about this as a problem as much as I'm pointing this out as
an opportunity missed to acquaint the many visitors to our site with who we
are. One goal I'd think we all share is to get more people to become members
of OWW or to get more people to, based on what we offer, link to us and,
thereby, increase the exposure of the system in the eyes of relevance-ranked
search engines.
>
> > 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 artist. 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.
>
I appreciate your opinion. Maybe you're right. I hope we're not saying that
if we don't connect to a visitor on the specific search term that brought
the user to us, we don't want to encourage them to come back. We sort of
appear to be a bunch of pages to people coming in from Google and not a
specific site.
Take a look at how other online bio communities and web sites handle this.
Compare to information points we can all corroborate. if most other places
don't tell who they are to people coming in from Google, I agree: we don't
need to be concerned. But if we're not currently using good search metrics
to get more people involved in OWW, maybe we can.
>
> --
> 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
>
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Message: 4
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:17:54 -0400
From: "Bill F" <bill.altmail at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [OWW-Discuss] OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity
feature?
To: "Jason Morrison" <jason.p.morrison at gmail.com>
Cc: "discuss at openwetware.org" <discuss at openwetware.org>
Message-ID:
<26428aaa0803311417t49881ad5u3782b1fb86fbc635 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 5:09 PM, Jason Morrison <jason.p.morrison at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 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)?
Nothing is occcluded. It's invisible to lab websites as well since the tag
is bracketed by "<wikionly>" tags.
> 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.
>
This isn't a popup. It's a section of the page that's invisible to returning
visitors. In other words, the "visiblility" attribute is by default set to
'invisible'.
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> OpenWetWare Discussion Mailing List
> discuss at openwetware.org
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-discuss
>
>
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