beta.python.org content

[A.M. Kuchling]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:33:06 +0000, 
	Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>>>   http://beta.python.org/about/beginners/

My suggestion would be "too much text".  IMHO, people do not read
paragraphs of material on the web.  The basic structure shouldn't be
the paragraph, but the bullet point.  e.g.

Why Python?

	Agile programming language <link to 'About Python'>
	Active community <link to 'Community'>: conferences <link>, 
		newsgroups <link>, mailing lists <link>
        Open source <link>

Questions?  See the FAQ.  <link>

I learned this at the MEMS Exchange, where we began by writing an
explanatory paragraph explaining how to do something.  Users would
ignore it completely, and call us on the phone asking "how do I do X?
What's a Y?" even though X and Y were explained right in that text.
Once it was rewritten into note form, the phone calls became much less
frequent.  The wiki beginner's guide tries to be similarly laconic,
though it doesn't always succeed.

It's irritating, I know; the paragraphs aren't unduly long, and the
style is readable, not boring or academic.  It would make a good
article, press release, or white paper.  But web users just don't care
about blocks of text.  (I keep meaning to fix
http://www.python.org/2.4.2/, which is just awful in this respect.)

--amk