[uf-discuss] Microformats.org usability review

[Mark Rickerby]

On 2/2/06, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> On 2/1/06 6:53 PM, "Ryan King" <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:
> > I'm not opposed to having tutorials and more beginner-friendly
> > material on http://microformats.org, but AFAICT, those sorts of
> > things don't write themselves.
>
> Correct.
>
> In fact, if folks either want to write tutorials, or want tutorials on
> anything in particular, please add them to the to-do page:
>
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/to-do

Ryan makes an important point. I have added a list of short term
tasks/goals here. I'm currently working from the
get-something-done-in-five-minutes perspective, and acting on some of
the introductory content ideas which have been discussed.

>
> > http://microformats.org/about/people/ is out-of-date and most
> > certainly always will be. It might be better just to kill it.
>
> I have to disagree on this point.  I think it is quite useful from the point
> of view of here are the folks that have contributed significant time and
> effort, even *before* there was a microformats.org.  Perhaps we need to just
> edit the prose/headlines to reflect that.

Yes, I think this definitely belongs in the site somewhere - just that
it's context, like the colophon needs to reflect it's nature as more
of a background piece, than primary site content.

> >> === Discuss (http://microformats.org/discuss/) ===
> >>
> >> A spartan section, but very useful and well presented. Could
> >> potentially be more friendly and inviting? I know the notion of
> >> "community" is overused, but might still be a good idea to  reflect it
> >> here somehow.
> >
> > "community" *is* overused and *ambiguous*. I'm willing to improve
> > this section, but I'm not hearing any actionably suggestions.
>
> +1 on what Ryan said.

It works well, so maybe isn't an immediate priority. What I wrote was
ambiguous enough. I think what I was thinking was to try and
communicate more of a connection to the aspects of the open source
process - that it is a working group as much as a discussion group.

> > People don't read.
>
> It's worse than that.  Even when told to do so, people don't read.
>
> I had one person ask me *three* times why their all lowercase username
> attempts were not working, even when I told them to go read the FAQ which
> answers this common problem right at the beginning.
>
> I haven't come up with a good way of dealing with this and am open to
> suggestions.

Consider it a filter for effective participation.

>
> >> A "Get Started Now" link would be a great compliment or replacement
> >> for the existing "Find Out More" link, acting as a subtle call to
> >> action, and communicating to readers that they can potentially
> >> implement one or several microformats with their existing content in a
> >> matter of minutes.
> >
> > I'd love to link to something like that from the homepage, but it
> > doesn't exist. Write it, and it shall be linked.

Am working on it :)

Regards,
Mark