Re: Proposed improvements to the mailing lists archives

At 11:16 AM 3/28/2002 +0100, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote:
>- a message page doesn't have one parent, but 4 of them: how do you know
>if the user has come to this message through the dated list, thread
>list, subject list or author list?

You don't, but that's okay.

>I think trying to stick to one of
>them would be very confusing for the user.

I don't think so.  The idea of the hierarchical navigation bar is not to 
FORCE the user to navigate that way -- indeed I think it is very helpful to 
provide other navigational directions also -- but to provide a DEFAULT 
structure that the user can easily understand.  As Al pointed out, this is 
critical in making a site understandable to users.

>- I still believe that http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public is the worse
>parent you could give to our mailing index pages: this just a list of
>mailing list names, without any context.

I don't entirely agree.  It gives an alphabetized list, which is very easy 
to scan if you know the name of the list you want.  (Alphabetization is one 
of the two most powerful organizational schemes, in general.  The second is 
chronological.)

I think that http://lists.w3.org/ is not the ideal hierarchy parent, from a 
user's perspective, as the top of the navigational hierarchy.  The only 
thing worse would be having none at all!

However, I do entirely agree with the main thrust of your point (if I'm 
understanding it properly): that it may be more helpful to users if the 
hierarchy were broken down by more meaningful categories.

But I think the best way to go at this point is to use a navigation bar 
that reflects the hierarchy implicit in the URL:

 > From the list archive root:
 >http://lists.w3.org/
 >Then by access (Public, Member, Team):
 >http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/
 >Then by list name:
 >http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/
 >Then by month:
 >http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2002Mar/
 >Then by specific message:
 >http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2002Mar/0040.html

At least that represents one sensible structure, even if it isn't 
necessarily the best possible.  And later, if someone figures out a better 
hierarchical organization then maybe the format should be revamped at that 
point.  But I think it's much more important to have an imperfect 
hierarchical navigational scheme than to have none at all.

Thanks.

David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273

Received on Thursday, 28 March 2002 17:21:29 UTC