[ZDP] Re: Stuff

[Rik Hoekstra]

> Rik Hoekstra schrieb:
> > > > more or less new to Zope. This leads me to conclude there are many
> > > > people running Zope who are not in the community in any way.
> 
> The ZDP is aiming to become the starting point for the Zope
> community.

Ok, so it should be open for anyone

> 
> > > A colleague of mine raised an interesting point: To many people, the
> > > Zope community is actually very inpenetrable as you don't know who to
> > > trust or believe and, of course, it's very unclear as to where you
> > > shoudl get docs and other information from. Maybe we should suggest this
> > > problem to Ethan when he returns?
> >
> > Hm, never thought about this that way, but it's probably true. While
> > Ethan does a good job, I think this is (still) partly  a result of the
> > unhelpful Zope site.
> 
> The software on the Zope.org site is not open, so the only thing we can
> do is do our own thing on ZDP.

yes. As if that wouldn't be enough ;-)

> 
> > The troubling point is, Zope still radiates a
> > nerdish image and they website doesn't really open it up for interested
> > non-developers.
> 
> You can become a Zope.org member, so it is open for non-developers.

That's not what I meant: I meant that there is no easy way in. No real
quickstart, no 'inviting frontdoor'

> 
> > The mailing list is helpful, but it's just too much.
> 
> I hope that we can integrate the mailing list in the ZDP site, so
> extracting, citing and giving credit is easier.

Have you seen the ZMailin stuff by the NIP guys (didn't have time to
check it out myself). Supposedly this should be helpful

> 
> > And starting using Zope is still too difficult (as has been repeated for a
> > thousand times). This taken together, ZOpe has no real starting point.
> > This _will_ put off many people.
> 
> You can go to one of the ZDP portals for a start. There is a starting
> point for each type of user. If what you expect to be there isn't
> existing, you can do something about it, because the ZDP site is
> completely open.

I know Maik, most people just won't do it :-( The ZDP still lacks
momentum

> 
> > It is surprising then that, despite the imprenatability of the
> > community, there seem to be so many people using Zope anyway!
> 
> Please go to the ZDP portals and share your knowledge about Zope.

I do that as much as I can find time for it

> 
> > The ZDP _should_ help this, but there site design is still not very
> > inviting as well (sorry Maik, no offense meant).
> 
> I have taken each comment made on the design into consideration
> up to now.

That's true, but it's still not there.


> 
> > I did some mockups for an improved site. Don't have them here,
> > I'll finish it tonight and then post something. (But please,
> > bear with me I'no graphic artist either ;-))
> 
> There is already some work done on this, so you may want to take
> this into consideration. Christian Scholz (cs@comlounge.net) has
> done some graphics for the ZDP:
> 
> http://comlounge.net/projekte/zdp/

OK, that _looks_ OK for the most part. The main missing point is that
you already have to know something about Zope even to start using that
stuff. We are talking about _low_ level entry stuff here. I don't want
to be nasty at all, but I tried to imagine I was someone who came to the
ZDP site with questions about Zope. I included some of the questions
below.

Imagine you never used Zope before and want to know a bit more. Where do
you start? WHat will get you running Zope as quickly as possible. Is it
the FAQ, the ZBook, Snippets, one of the Portals. How would you know
they were portals and not dmoz like categories - they look like search
categories? WHat does the news part mean? You see you can search
something - what. WHat results should you expect? 
How should you know all this? 

And this also goes for more advanced Zope users: where do I find the
stuff that's for me. How would I know whether I'm a developer or a
hacker. Is there stuff in Users that's for me, or only in my own
category?
How does all this relate to zope.org?

I don't claim there are easy answers, but at least these are some
questions to expect from people.

Rik