[Grok-dev] Re: Grok site: changing "Learn" to "Documentation" in the main navigation

[Lennart Regebro]

OK, so I vote for Nouns, just for consistency with everything else. We
don't want to confuse people that want to download a bunch of
frameworks and test.

On Jan 3, 2008 1:40 PM, Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> wrote:
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> Sebastian Ware wrote:
> > 3 jan 2008 kl. 08.51 skrev Jan Ulrich Hasecke:
> >
> >> Am 03.01.2008 um 00:06 schrieb Kevin Teague:
> >>
> >>> Documentation is likely to be more easily understood I think be
> >>> people
> >>> looking for ... documentation. Although I do like the symmetry of
> >>> having
> >>> verbs for the four main site sections. If we changed all of the main
> >>> sections in the navigator to nouns we would have:
> >>>
> >>> * Evaluate -> About
> >>>
> >>> * Learn -> Documentation
> >>>
> >>> * Develop -> Project (?)
> >>>
> >>> * Participate -> Community
> >>>
> >> Ok, the site is in English and maybe it sounds cool to have verbs,
> >> if you are a native speaker. To all other it simply does not matter
> >> and if you would translate these verbs into German it would sound
> >> very much like baby speak to German ears.
> >>
> >
> > There is ALLWAYS a language problem if you translate directly from
> > English to German... :)
> >
> > "The Brits often assume that Germans have no sense of humour. In
> > truth, writes comedian Stewart Lee, it's a language problem."
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,1781004,00.html
> >
> >> If you use verbs you might address readers more directly. But
> >> doesn't it sound like an imperative? Evaluate! Learn! Develop! In
> >> German it would be something between plain infinitive (to evaluate)
> >> and imperative and is very suitable for menus in programmes. But if
> >> I click on "send as mail" the programme sends as mail and not me. In
> >> our case we want people to read a lot of stuff, so it might sound
> >> like an imperative. And If I read "Evaluate" I expect a lot of work
> >> to – evaluate. If I read "About" I expect a one-pager to get it all
> >> in a concise manner.
> >
> > The verbs answer the question "What do you want to do at the Grok
> > website?". Probably 99% of the visitors can answer that question
> > without hesitation.
> >
> >>
> >> So I would plead for the most understandable version. If you look at
> >> a webpage there are only fractions of a second to get what it is all
> >> about. I would have no problems with nouns in menus and verbs in the
> >> buttons, because the buttons shall really address the reader.
> >
> > The nouns require you to know what you are looking for in order to do
> > what you want to do. I believe that the verbs are infinitely more
> > usable, because it requires us to do the thinking, whereas nouns
> > leaves the thinking to the visitor (who has little or no idea of how
> > we structured the website).
> >
> > Nouns are good for experts (on the grok website). Verbs good for the
> > "newbie visitor". However, a good search is even better for experts if
> > the content grows to be more than what is really easily browseable.
>
> Can we assume that other successful open-source / free software project
> sites might provide clues to what "works"?  A quick survey:
>
>  - http://python.org/ uses nouns for navigation.
>
>  - http://djangoproject.com/ uses nouns as the "structure" (the
>    navigation links at the top of each page), but has "Meet Django"
>    as its lead item on the homepage.
>
>  - http://rubyonrails.org/ uses nouns for navigation, but has verbs
>    ("Get Excited", "Get Started", "Get Better", "Get Involved") on
>    the homepage.
>
>  - http://turbogears.org/ uses nouns for navigatino, *except* for
>    the "Install" section.
>
>  - http://extjs.com/ (Ext JS framework) uses nouns for naviation,
>    *except" for the "Learn" section.
>
>  - http://drupal.org/ (PHP CMS) uses nouns for navigation, *except*
>    for "Download".
>
>
>
> Tres.
> - --
> ===================================================================
> Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
> Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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-- 
Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting.
http://www.colliberty.com/
+33 661 58 14 64