[pydotorg-www] project plan

[Jesse Noller]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 3:57 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Jesse Noller wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 1:26 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>>>> As a piece of anecdotal evidence - I speak to people *daily*, in which
>>>> the conversation goes like this:
>>>>
>>>> Them: "Man, I found a bug in the docs/python lib/site"
>>>> Me: "Please file a bug, better yet, file a patch! Especially the docs,
>>>> they're easy to fix!"
>>>> Them: <rummaging>
>>>> Them: I have to do *what* to change a line in the docs?! Check out
>>>> code? Do a diff? Screw that!! I have other things to do that *pay me*.
>>>> Me: Please file a bug at least!
>>>> Them: Why bother? It's going to take forever for it to get fixed. You
>>>> deal with it.
>>> Can you please give three or four examples of the changes they would
>>> like to see made? Please be as specific as possible.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Martin
>>>
>>
>> Rather then trying to randomly summarize discussion spanning about two
>> years mixed with gut feelings, I took the discussion public:
>>
>> http://jessenoller.com/2010/04/22/why-arent-you-contributing-to-python/
>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1285897
>
> Hmm. Maybe you were exaggerating them? If you get *daily* conversations
> on how difficult it is to contribute to python.org, you don't have to go
> back two years - just this week should provide you with four examples...
>
> In any case, the posting you made has a different focus than the one we
> had been discussing (at least, what I thought we were discussing),
> namely python.org - *not* python itself. I know there are barriers to
> contributing to Python, but I think I understand them much better, plus
> I do think people contribute plenty to Python - we get more issues than
> we can process.
>
> I had hoped you would be able to provide examples of changes that people
> specifically want to make to python.org (and remain still wondering what
> precisely you meant by that).
>
> Regards,
> Martin
>

But the design of the site is being criticized - my point is is that
python.org is the primary gateway to helping people get things done,
and if you look at the feedback, in between "ugh patches" comments,
you'll see more than a few people saying that the website is
confusing, or that it's hard to find information.

Python.org is our primary weapon to getting people the
knowledge/engaged with the project as a hole, both as a user, and
contributor.

How can we fix it? Based off of this little posts feedback, as well as
the other conversations:

1> Make it clear / prominent *where to download*
2> Make it clear / prominent *where to file bugs*
3> Make it clear / prominent how to get involved in the community.
4> Make it clear / prominent how to get packages.
5> Add a link to the bug tracker on the front page - but say "report an issue"
6> Remove the need to login to file a bug.

Little things like that. Reduce the amount of information "bloat" on
the front page and help people get started "at a glance"

The information is buried, it's hard to navigate, the layout is
confusing. Compare python.org to say:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
http://www.perl.org/
http://www.djangoproject.com/
http://rubyonrails.org/

Or any number of other language or project sites. The reason that I
chose to make the post soliciting feedback is that I'm strongly biased
against the current site, and the processes for updating it. I'd
rather the people I'm trying to help empower have a voice. While core
development has a barrier - the current site only makes that barrier
much higher, and needlessly so.

jesse