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March 21, 2009 - 11:27am
It's a fact, we have limited human and time resources to put into this website. The website has technical limitations on how many features it supports before it gets too slow.
So, the only way to evaluate which features and content are "must have" and which features are "nice to have" has to go back to first principles. We have to answer these questions:
- What are our primary objectives in having this website?
- Which features and content most help us reach those objectives?
There are other questions to ask, but the first two are the big ones.
Here's how I see it.
What are our primary objectives in having this website?
- Advertising - What we are, what we do, how to contact us.
- Communication - What we have scheduled, how to find local resources - suppliers, workspaces, teachers, others with shared interests.
Which features and content most help us reach those objectives?
What we are.
The About Us, Beginners's Guide, and the not-obvious Information for Site Owners links cover this.
What we do.
The above links, plus the local and kingdom calendars, plus the How-To articles and Image Galleries cover this. More How-Tos on a wide variety of topics along with matching image galleries would do an even better job.
How to contact us.
This isn't as obvious as it should be. It needs to be "Front and Center" and totally dirt obvious.
A total newcomer will see the word "Cantons" and will likely glaze over. There is no explanation of what a canton is. The modern names of the cantons are listed, but they are not listed first, and they wrap across lines. So they may not see the modern city name they live near.
The beginner's guide tells them to contact the Chatelaine, but not what a chatelaine is, nor how to find them.
The canton websites are generally not very good at making it easy to contact someone.
What we have scheduled.
The calendars cover this well.
How to find local resources
There are a few "Where-To" documents that list suppliers and workplaces available. It is not easy to identify who is interested in a topic unless they took the time to write an article on it. Nor does the site provide any way to contact them other than a general "shot-gun" approach of writing a forum submission or event description and hoping people see it. We could do much, much better here. With such a large geographic area to cover, it's much harder to find that kind of information out in person.
March 21, 2009 - 11:57am
#2
User Interest list via Articles
This link shows an article set up to help people find others interested in the same topic.
www.windmastershill.org/node/680
The same concept could be used in the Forums, but that would be navigationally separate from the articles on the same topic, so I don't think that's the better option.
March 21, 2009 - 11:13pm
#3
I applaud you for this
I applaud you for this entry. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to voice my opinion on the website because I've been inactive for four years, but you pointed out some of my own complaints.
Contact info is not obvious enough, as you said, and I'll just reiterate.
I also think info for beginners is not obvious enough. More than apparent, I think it needs to be prominent, and visually set apart from everything else, so it is easier than pie for potential members to find the information they need and the content we want them to see. As it is now within other tabs, the beginner's guide is visible but not the slap in the face it should be. I feel this is the most important issue that I mention here.
I also think the current hierarchy of categories and links (could use some refining but that's a separate issue) is a little intimidating to someone navigating the site for the first time. SCA veterans from other locations will persevere, but I think the easier and simpler it is for newcomers, community members, and the media to navigate and learn about Windmaters, the better. Many tiny articles should be combined into a single scroll-down article; for example, office descriptions do not each need their own page. That is probably needless complexity.
Last, I have no specific complaint here, but where should Windmasters draw the line when it comes to content? Where along the spectrum of comprehensive-to-tight should this site be? Other SCA websites on the internet have resources that really can't be beat, and instead of reinventing the wheel we could be linking to them. On the other hand, if the goal is to make this website one of the top-notch resoures in the society, publishing all our own articles makes sense.
But as I said, I think ease of navigation for beginner's and first-time visitors should be a priority. Maybe it's because I consider myself somewhat of a beginner (reborn at Ymir?), and when I visited this new site for the first time looking for the basics, I went, "Wait...what's going on?"
All that said, I am so grateful for the work the developers have put into this site thus far. Thank you.
March 22, 2009 - 1:40am
#4
Thank you both for posting.
Thank you both for posting. This is exactly the kind of feedback we require to get the website where it should be. If anyone has specific proposals on how to increase the visibility of information for newcomers I'd love to hear them. And a side note to anyone else out there that was thinking about holding their tonge: don't. We need your feedback. Everyone on the website team has a healthy understanding of the difference between criticism and bitching, and we welcome the former.
March 22, 2009 - 3:52am
#5
One way to make the
One way to make the newcomer's info more visible is to reduce visual clutter for them.
There are a number of features on the site that non-members don't need to see. Make those only visible to people who aren't logged in as a site member.
The Policies menu fits that for sure. Maybe the Windlore and the Forum too, but I'm less sure about that. Perhaps some topic areas in the forum, those dealing with internal matters, should be made private
Second is to identify the questions that newcomers want answers to and make sure the menu options reflect those questions.
March 23, 2009 - 11:43am
#6
Goals
Thank you folks for bringing this up. I've been working on a blog post about this verry topic, but let me give you my answers on the quick here.
When we were notified that we were the next baronage, we put together a list of things that we would like to work on changing/fixing/improving. The website was and still is, one of those things.
When I think of what windmastershill.org can be, and should be, I think of two primary functions. First, it should be a tool for community organization. Secondly, it should be a focal point for newcomers to find us with.
For community organization, we need tools to communicate with each other in a variety of ways. We need to be able to communicate with the entire group, or with just a canton or two, or with a guild, or with people who are just interested in a specific activity. We (as in everybody) should be able to communicate our thoughts, ideas, plans, and findings to other folks who should be interested. Take a look at how the President ran his campaign, and you'll see a highly effective web pressence that was used to get interested people to do things they never did before. It went beyond the usual "get out the vote" (which was also greatly improved) but went into hosting meetups, fund raising, and issue advocacy.
Secondly, we need to use the web to actively recruit new members. A website can make a great followup contact, and we've done this for years. Handing out flyers with our URL is standard operating procedure. I'm talking about adding to that, so when someone google's "sword fighting AND NC" or "medieval", etc., WH.org should be right there at the top of those search results. I'd like to push out to other community calendar sites, so when someone says "what's going on in Durham tonight", the SCA pops up as an option. That is one way we can try and get to people who we've never even thought of or met before.
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I hacked this from the user list page.
Let's pretend that when you register for the site, you are presented with a set of checkboxes you can check to signify that you are interested in a given topic. Each topic gets its own checkbox.
Then, when I go to the User List page, I have the option of picking one of those topics from a drop-down list.
Let's say I choose "Ceramics".
I might see a list like this with links to the profile of each user who is interested in that topic:
Now, that would be an improvement in communication! Even better would be if it showed me their sca name, email address and phone number so I don't have to go to each profile page to find it!
To make this technique go full circle, when a new topic is added, an email is sent to each registered user with a link back to their profile page in case they want to check that topic box.
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