[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Do you want to write pages that thousands of people see every day?

[Peter Coombe]

I like what's been done so far. My day job is actually for a publisher
selling computer help for beginners, so thought I'd share a few things
we've learnt:

* Address people personally, and try to make them feel included. This
is why {{helpme}} is a great invention.

* Bullet points are useful, but prose is engaging too. If you make
prose interesting and relevant, believe it or not people *will read
it*, even if it's relatively long.

* Screenshots (especially labelled ones) are great for newbies. It's
remarkably easy to overlook parts of the interface.

* Videos are even better, plus they can have a more personal touch :-)

* Easily readable text is more important than fancy design. That
usually means black, and of a reasonable size. Too many bluelinks in a
passage make it harder to read, and can be distracting. Short line
lengths are nice too.

And thoughts on what we've got so far:

* Redesign: Seems pretty good, improves on the original which itself
has already had quite a lot of work.

* Polish version: Not sure it's a huge help really, throwing them into
creating a userpage without much guidance. If this is used it might be
a good idea to prefill the edit page a bit to help them.

* Options: To be honest I found it rather confusing. Some boxes to
separate the options better would be nice.

* Video1: This is nice, good to see something a bit different.

* Easy steps: I definitely prefer this to the Options one

* Bookshelf: The idea of having a book intro is great, and it provides
the opportunity to do some really nice design. But there are parts of
the text in this which are almost unreadable.

* mod2 (FT2's version): The overall design is nice, and it's laid out
logically. I'd fix the header colours though.

* Video walkthrough: I think this is my favourite. Good job Sage.

Anyway I'll have a crack at making my own version tonight.

Pete / the wub