The loneliness of an unloved front page...

General Discussions
#1

Note: this has come out of a discussion on “Why isn’t the Wiki being used much?”. In the process, I realised that the front page is currently an almost criminal waste of space…and that fixing it could be enough to improve Wiki’s usage considerably, but also to make some other major benefits…

IMHO the frontpage of JGO is currently a complete waste of space.

The very most important text (forums, wiki, etc) on the whole page is the smallest, and extremely hard to find amidst the colourful (but useless) graphics and text. Even “Java Games Affiliates” gets more emphasis than these! (Are these people paying for this or something?). Basic UI design: On a complex page, with bigger text in the center, most people look at the center first. Many don’t even look anywhere else (people are accustomed to IGNORING small print, and anything at the edges that is small == smallprint in their minds).

As to the news…well, I’m deeply unimpressed by a news page that is about ten light years behind the forums. Why bother looking at a front page that gets an update every few weeks, when the forums’ news sections get several a day? (Why bother HAVING news on the front page unless it can be updated at a similar rate … and places like flipcode etc demonstrate that it certainly can be done?). Oh, sorry, I forgot - we also get 5 headlines from 3DGamers. Great!

Now, if that page instead had three sections in the main column: “forums”, “projects”, “wiki”, and each of these sections contained a few showcased items EACH DAY (or at the very least a couple cherry-picked each week), then I bet you’d see a heck of a lot more going on at the wiki - and probably in the projects area too.

FWVLIW, the only reason I became active in the forums was when I turned up at JGO one day and found the site had disappeared, to be replaced by the forums alone. Now, that’s what I call “promotion”. Kind of inevitable with that level of exposure that I’d register for the forums sooner or later…

Whilst it’s always amusing to see Chris’s grinning face staring back at me from JGO ;D, there are surely better uses for this space? If no-one at the GTG has time to scan the forums, the projects, AND the Wiki for interesting tidbits to highlight, just give a few of us some kind of priviledges to post to the front page - and then vet whatever we come up with (AFAICS java.net/collabnet supports this kind of thing very well?).

You have at least 20 people who’s profligate usage of the forums to date demonstrates their suitability to make such judgements (what would be interesting, for instance) - and with a small group of them (rather than just one), any personal bias (e.g. towards certain topics) would even out over time.

#2

So, along with a redesign of the appropriate websites, are suggesting some sort of volunteer quality management group (sounds terrible ;)) that picks out the interesting points and makes sure they get to the front along with making sure the organisation of the Wiki stays consistent and managed?

I suppose you really need some ** ADMIN/SUN ** input at this point…

Kev

#3

Ahem. Yes… the frontpage…

Yea, I think it’s pretty useless right now… infact I hadn’t even looked at it since the forum was back :>

#4

This forum is the nexus of the Java gaming community. It should be the front page, one way or the other.

Cas :slight_smile:

#5

[quote]This forum is the nexus of the Java gaming community. It should be the front page, one way or the other.
[/quote]
…but, surely, a forum can only ever be a forum, whereas a front page can be a lot more? (and can include direct links into the forum). A good web designer (not just someone who can “program” HTML) could work wonders…

#6

This always happens with sites that have active forums. Of all the forums I frequent, I rarely if ever visit their main page.

I think non forum content such as the wiki and website can be a great place for FAQs and tutorials, so people can be pointed in that direction when the questions come up here.

Forums are good for flowing content, websites are good for static content. Surely game development has both types.

#7

[quote]This always happens with sites that have active forums. Of all the forums I frequent, I rarely if ever visit their main page.
[/quote]
Presumably either they don’t have much need for non-forum stuff (many sites I use are able to satisfy all their users only using the features provided by a forum - but that is apparently not the case with JGO), or they don’t have carefully-designed front pages?

Hmm. So why are news sites so popular, and so very much more popular than NNTP feeds (amongst general, non-techy/specialist population)?

I always thought one of the greatest advantages of HTML and the web was the speed with which websites could be changed. These days, free CMS’s/DMS’s make this process effortless, in addition to fast.

I can’t agree that forums are even good for “flowing content”. Instead I’d say they’re very good for rotating content, where they sort by “most recent post”, and are good for discussion. They’re good for expounding upon an idea, because the entire reasoning is also recorded chronologically (despite being presented reverse-chrono, which is a nice UI trick).

What they aren’t good at is summarising conversations. In a perfect world, a different tool exists which is used to summarise the important conclusions of each discussion, and these are categorized and maintained. Otherwise, every newcomer has to read an exponentially increasing number of posts in order to catch up to the status quo?

It was my understanding that the Wiki was started in order to solve this kind of problem. But it isn’t working.

#8

hm…the wiki was a good idea in the first place, but it’s to hidden and without any content. in my firm we use a wiki for a lot of stuff. it works great, but i think a cms with only a few guys who maintain it would be better.

the wiki in my firm works, because only a few people are working with it. we have a very strikt policy on what to add and where to add it. i have seen a few wikis on the web, but none was very good structured.

but what do the admins think about all this :wink: ?

#9

Ok, the “admin” here understands your points and they are well taken. The issue sis that we are constrained by the overall Java.Net framework. Remember, we launched this entire community (Java.Net) in June. It will take a little bit of time to work out the kinks.

We will continue to improve the site over time. Also, we will discuss the POSSIBILITY of allowing community members to help support the site by becoming publishers/editors, If we can find a way that is workable.

Thanks for your continued support. :slight_smile:

-SG

#10

Surely in the short term we can get some links in the banner at the top of these forums? To the back to the Wiki and other community pages I mean…

And since you can change the main content in the middle of the http://community.java.net/games/ page it can’t be all that hard to stick some more prominent links to things, maybe with a larger description about what is at each link.

#11

In the mean time we should add all the examples (GAGETimer and Texture stuff…) to the Wiki. I will have time for it on sunday, if anyone is faster, please do it :wink:

troggan

#12

Do links to the wiki e.g. http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Games work if you are not already logged in to the community at java.net?
(test it ^ :slight_smile: )

Yep, it appears so. That’s good. It would really suck otherwise.

#13

[quote]Surely in the short term we can get some links in the banner at the top of these forums? To the back to the Wiki and other community pages I mean…
[/quote]
Something akin to the NavBar at the top of the project pages http://games.dev.java.net/nonav/navbar.html, or did you hava something else in mind?

#14

A little bit more information on whats there would be great…but as a start, why not :wink:

#15

Yeah, something along that line… Although you have an interesting definition of ‘top’ :slight_smile: That line shows up over halfway down the screen on the project pages… I know it is at the top of the content that you can define per project… but as a navigation tool it’s placement isn’t ideal. Maybe if all of that was shoved to the left side on the project pages, like how we have a link to the forums now.

But for here, anything that pulls in the Wiki, and the project sites would be great.

#16

I’ll encourage the Sun folks to visit the flipcode.com site. While flipcode has an incredibly active community I ALWAYS visit the front page of that site. Why? Screenshots of games,projects, etc. and news about the industry, products being released, etc.

For a site that is incredibly focussed on games, it take a lot to actually see an image of one. Of other interest might be developer diaries linked to the front page as that’s something I usually portal into from time to time as well. Wouldn’t hurt to include the RSS of some of the blogs for people around here either.

In short - the problem is that we have all this content and its getting buried in the forums because there really is no better place for it (and I loathe and despise the Wiki).

#17

Regarding the NavBar:

Yeah, I know it’s not on the “top” of the project pages, but it’s as far north as we can put it. If you look at non-“project home” pages like http://joal-demos.dev.java.net/devmaster/lesson1.html you’ll get a better sense of what I mean. It’s still not at the “top” but it’s pretty darn close :slight_smile:

Also, I need to get with Chris on this but if you go to: http://games.dev.java.net/forums you do get the side panel with the links to projects, the Wiki etc. There’s currently a bug with resizing the scrollbars when you navigate through topics (too much page space sometimes) and there seems to be a bug when running inside of IE, but otherwise it may fit what you’re asking for.

#18

Just get the sidebar on the side of these forums and you’re halfway there.

Cas :slight_smile:

#19

That’s what the above link does… though it’s not perfect.

#20

[quote]Just get the sidebar on the side of these forums and you’re halfway there
[/quote]
Yeah, I guess I wasn’t clear. Going to http://games.dev.java.net/forums takes you to a page with the JGO forums nested in the java.net template.