Re: We need a more UI-friendly group

[ top post ]

Hi Abhimanyu!

You have a point. User Experience is not easy with our current
deployment. It uses techniques and methodologies that are usable and in
use for decades, and requires experience with those tools.

Which is indeed not easy for beginners who wants to learn.

I have to say that one of our prime directive is about keeping open and
vendor neutral everything our group creates. To achieve this, we decided
to exclusively use Open source software.

My work at WPD is about infrastructure. At this very moment, I’m
reworking the whole server stack and going toward easing contributions
without access to the servers. As for the tools we use; I welcome any
suggestions you may have. As long as it fits our values.

If you want to chat with me, I’m easy to find as "renoirb".

Looking forward to discussing with you.

-- 
Renoir Boulanger    http://www.w3.org/People/#renoirb
@renoirb                 https://renoirboulanger.com/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)    http://www.w3.org/


On 2014-12-12 8:21 AM, abhimanyu0003 wrote:
> Right here, I had to compose a new email, add p-wp@w3.. address, add your address (Pat), and add a subject before I could even start typing. I don't think this feeling is very great. Well, all things you've mentioned can be counter-argued or criticised. So, kindly read along.
> 
> Facebook archives will also be permanently available. There's no indexing I see of our emails either.
> 
> Facebook doesn't deliver anything. In the group (like I have to open my mail account, you have to open the Facebook group, nothing different), you can see all posts. Further, you'll get notified of each new post. The Timeline thing you said is rather an advantage. The popular and more discussed posts of the group WILL ALSO BE SHOWN on members' Timelines, a bonus.
> 
> If you have to search for the mail in your inbox, you have to search for the post in the group. I don't see what you're trying to say here. Of course older posts will be beyond the event horizon, but you can easily search for them, exactly how you would search for an old mail in inbox. Further, Facebook's being-on-top system is a good UI: any new comment will push the post on top. Further, being "out of sight" is a very good and efficient UI mechanism, just in case you don't know. No need to scroll, if you know what you're looking for, you can directly search.
> 
> You say if there are lots of communities you have to see and one option is to have them as Facebook groups and other option is to have emails coming from them. Please do not confuse me. We're talking about taking WPD's work communication on Facebook, we're not dealing with a client and her problem with multiple groups she has to look at. I have fifteen groups on Facebook that I actively participate in and just four mailing lists. Yet, the mailing lists are more messy and a pathetic excuse in the name of user interface.
> 
> Your gripe that emails come one by one while Facebook posts (in supposedly active groups only, WPD group won't be a mammoth brimming with activity, just to let you know) misses one important point: again, UI. For any newcomer, the Facebook interface is much better. They can be notified about posts in the WPD group (say there are five posts per day, each member will be notified of each post, else if the member is interested, they will directly open the group and read all new posts, which are clearly above a line that says "older posts", so they can avoid any post which has no new activity and has been previously read). They can see popular posts in their feed too. They can visit the group just as they would open the mail interface.
> 
> Chat, in my opinion, is the least important thing in WPD work. We need detailed messages, that better fit and make more sense as "posts": pieces of content that people can comment on and like. Not IMs or emails.
> 
> All the needs: 
> archiving is automatic in Facebook;
> 
> open access, well you're forgetting that if there's a place after China and India that has so many people together, it's Facebook, and it's completely open too;
> 
> web search, Facebook cannot provide you that, but for sensitive information, we're still using our main site, the WPD - which is indexed well, why do we need to index the emails? I've never seen any email being indexed in any search engine since I was 10 years old, I understand that main WPD mailing list servers act as good resources as they keep copies of the text shared, but finally, we don't need that. If I propose some change and it gets applied in the main site, then what's the point whether we can save that proposal or not in a server? (well it WILL be available on Facebook forever, just in case) and if the proposal is bad, then there's no need to keep it anyway;
> 
> participant effort will be cool in Facebook, facilitated further by options to regulate membership, give our opinions more audience, and formulation of "docs" that present more discussion than simple posts, can be revised repeatedly, and can work as useful resources;
> 
> time required will be as much as mails, we mainly do typing, plus suppose a person thinks something and has to broadcast it, then I think there's more chance that a Facebook tab will already be open in her browser, while opening the mail interface is a troublesome task;
> 
> capability of tools, well Facebook has much greater tools than emails, that I can assure you of.
> 
> ---
> </Abhimanyu>

Received on Friday, 12 December 2014 17:31:57 UTC