[opensuse-project] Addressing newcomers
Hi all, I followed the discussion of the revived marketing team and also the meeting on 8.1.2020 from the perspective of a desktop user and having in mind people which want to switch from Windows to Linux. After thinking about this discussion I think we could/should put even more focus on attracting newcomers. This means that we should be more visible also outside the established Linux and openSUSE communities and reduce the entry hurdles. Some proposals: - Improve www.o.o. Some ideas below. - Write articles or article series for computer magazines and web sites targeted to the general user - (I should have more ideas, but currently that's it, sorry) For the www.o.o website: - First, write openSUSE the right way! At the German version it is spelled OpenSUSE :( - Improve the slogan. The German translation sounds like machine translation and is not appealing. One idea which came to my mind was "openSUSE: Get it! Use it! Be part of it!" linking to the download, the documentation and the community, resp. - Improve the links in the Tools section. They go directly into some quite deep pages instead of first telling what this is. E.g. YaST: yes, the linked page tells a little bit what this is. But when you go to `Documentation` you're already at developer documentation level. Keep the user in mind! - Contributing: are Code and Hardware really the two options? Put more focus on the community! - Generally: read the page with the eyes of a user who has heard of openSUSE recently and now wants to try it out. Give her/him everything she/he needs! Just some points I stumbled across when I was in about that situation two years ago: - Download was easy. But the page with instructions on how to create a bootable USB stick under Windows mentioned SUSE Studio Image writer. This tool is no longer supported for Windows and difficult to install. Remove it in favor of Etcher. Such a hurdle at the very beginning of the installation of openSUSE can be disappointing. - Mention the Multimedia codec topic in some prominent place. Discuss openSUSE's decision not to include some codecs in the standard repositories and the user's options. EVERY desktop user stumbles across this point, and quite some stop using openSUSE at this point because this does not work out of the box. - Finding the proper documentation was quite difficult. E.g. I had to ask on a forum before I found the page in the wiki explaining all the repositories and their content. There is no prominent link called `Documentation` on www.o.o. - Go through the Wiki. There are quite some pages, where the latest tested version for a documentation is 42.3 or even older. This makes a bad impression. Huch, is openSUSE still alive?! And provide some good entry points to relevant information for newcomers. There are so many portals! Where should I start? Thank you Vincent for reviving the marketing team and all others participating in this effort! openSUSE is great and deserves a good visibility. Best regards Martin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 18:45, Martin Winter <me@letsfindaway.de> wrote:
Hi all,
I followed the discussion of the revived marketing team and also the meeting on 8.1.2020 from the perspective of a desktop user and having in mind people which want to switch from Windows to Linux. After thinking about this discussion I think we could/should put even more focus on attracting newcomers. This means that we should be more visible also outside the established Linux and openSUSE communities and reduce the entry hurdles.
Some proposals:
- Improve www.o.o. Some ideas below. - Write articles or article series for computer magazines and web sites targeted to the general user - (I should have more ideas, but currently that's it, sorry)
This is going to be addressed when news-o-o starts being published off Github [1]. Anybody will be able to write an article and push it there.
For the www.o.o website:
- First, write openSUSE the right way! At the German version it is spelled OpenSUSE :( - Improve the slogan. The German translation sounds like machine translation and is not appealing. One idea which came to my mind was "openSUSE: Get it! Use it! Be part of it!" linking to the download, the documentation and the community, resp. - Improve the links in the Tools section. They go directly into some quite deep pages instead of first telling what this is. E.g. YaST: yes, the linked page tells a little bit what this is. But when you go to `Documentation` you're already at developer documentation level. Keep the user in mind! - Contributing: are Code and Hardware really the two options? Put more focus on the community! - Generally: read the page with the eyes of a user who has heard of openSUSE recently and now wants to try it out. Give her/him everything she/he needs!
In general, I want to move everything distribution related out of www-o-o, and expand on it on software-o-o (which I started doing in [2]). We cannot possibly explain everything we need to explain on the project page, so having a page that explains more about the distribution in another place sounds like the way to go. As for the slogan, Get it! Discover it! Create it! was a thing back when the only services openSUSE provided were the distribution (get it), Wiki (discover it) and OBS (create it). Nowadays, that's not very representative of the openSUSE Project.
Just some points I stumbled across when I was in about that situation two years ago:
- Download was easy. But the page with instructions on how to create a bootable USB stick under Windows mentioned SUSE Studio Image writer. This tool is no longer supported for Windows and difficult to install. Remove it in favor of Etcher. Such a hurdle at the very beginning of the installation of openSUSE can be disappointing. - Mention the Multimedia codec topic in some prominent place. Discuss openSUSE's decision not to include some codecs in the standard repositories and the user's options. EVERY desktop user stumbles across this point, and quite some stop using openSUSE at this point because this does not work out of the box.
This is mentioned in openSUSE Welcome, which shows up on every installation on the first boot.
- Finding the proper documentation was quite difficult. E.g. I had to ask on a forum before I found the page in the wiki explaining all the repositories and their content. There is no prominent link called `Documentation` on www.o.o.
Also in openSUSE Welcome.
- Go through the Wiki. There are quite some pages, where the latest tested version for a documentation is 42.3 or even older. This makes a bad impression. Huch, is openSUSE still alive?! And provide some good entry points to relevant information for newcomers. There are so many portals! Where should I start?
You are free to improve anything on the Wiki :D
Thank you Vincent for reviving the marketing team and all others participating in this effort! openSUSE is great and deserves a good visibility.
[1] https://github.com/openSUSE/news-o-o [2] https://github.com/openSUSE/software-o-o/pull/667 LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 1/14/20 4:34 AM, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 18:45, Martin Winter <me@letsfindaway.de> wrote:
Hi all,
I followed the discussion of the revived marketing team and also the meeting on 8.1.2020 from the perspective of a desktop user and having in mind people which want to switch from Windows to Linux. After thinking about this discussion I think we could/should put even more focus on attracting newcomers. This means that we should be more visible also outside the established Linux and openSUSE communities and reduce the entry hurdles.
Some proposals:
- Improve www.o.o. Some ideas below. - Write articles or article series for computer magazines and web sites targeted to the general user - (I should have more ideas, but currently that's it, sorry)
This is going to be addressed when news-o-o starts being published off Github [1]. Anybody will be able to write an article and push it there.
For the www.o.o website:
- First, write openSUSE the right way! At the German version it is spelled OpenSUSE :( - Improve the slogan. The German translation sounds like machine translation and is not appealing. One idea which came to my mind was "openSUSE: Get it! Use it! Be part of it!" linking to the download, the documentation and the community, resp. - Improve the links in the Tools section. They go directly into some quite deep pages instead of first telling what this is. E.g. YaST: yes, the linked page tells a little bit what this is. But when you go to `Documentation` you're already at developer documentation level. Keep the user in mind! - Contributing: are Code and Hardware really the two options? Put more focus on the community! - Generally: read the page with the eyes of a user who has heard of openSUSE recently and now wants to try it out. Give her/him everything she/he needs!
In general, I want to move everything distribution related out of www-o-o, and expand on it on software-o-o (which I started doing in [2]). We cannot possibly explain everything we need to explain on the project page, so having a page that explains more about the distribution in another place sounds like the way to go. As for the slogan, Get it! Discover it! Create it! was a thing back when the only services openSUSE provided were the distribution (get it), Wiki (discover it) and OBS (create it). Nowadays, that's not very representative of the openSUSE Project.
This in itself throws up a few things, for example when targeting new users they are likely to just think openSUSE is a distro if were lucky maybe they'll think its 2. In order to avoid extra confusion I think in the places we are targeting new users using phrases and wording that are more specific to openSUSE's Distro's makes sense. www.o.o becomes an interesting case where we likely want some balance of both because most people hitting it are probably interested in the distro's. Although everything else the project does should be covered there somewhere somehow. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 15:07, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
On 1/14/20 4:34 AM, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
In general, I want to move everything distribution related out of www-o-o, and expand on it on software-o-o (which I started doing in [2]). We cannot possibly explain everything we need to explain on the project page, so having a page that explains more about the distribution in another place sounds like the way to go. As for the slogan, Get it! Discover it! Create it! was a thing back when the only services openSUSE provided were the distribution (get it), Wiki (discover it) and OBS (create it). Nowadays, that's not very representative of the openSUSE Project.
This in itself throws up a few things, for example when targeting new users they are likely to just think openSUSE is a distro if were lucky maybe they'll think its 2.
In order to avoid extra confusion I think in the places we are targeting new users using phrases and wording that are more specific to openSUSE's Distro's makes sense. www.o.o becomes an interesting case where we likely want some balance of both because most people hitting it are probably interested in the distro's. Although everything else the project does should be covered there somewhere somehow.
Unlike other distro devs, we can't spend the entire page bragging about the distributions though, unless we send them off to some other page first. This also gives us the opportunity to send people links to the distributions page instead of project page if they want to learn more about the distributions, and send people links to the project page if they want to learn about the project instead of various scattered wiki pages. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 1/14/20 3:19 PM, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 15:07, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
On 1/14/20 4:34 AM, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
In general, I want to move everything distribution related out of www-o-o, and expand on it on software-o-o (which I started doing in [2]). We cannot possibly explain everything we need to explain on the project page, so having a page that explains more about the distribution in another place sounds like the way to go. As for the slogan, Get it! Discover it! Create it! was a thing back when the only services openSUSE provided were the distribution (get it), Wiki (discover it) and OBS (create it). Nowadays, that's not very representative of the openSUSE Project.
This in itself throws up a few things, for example when targeting new users they are likely to just think openSUSE is a distro if were lucky maybe they'll think its 2.
In order to avoid extra confusion I think in the places we are targeting new users using phrases and wording that are more specific to openSUSE's Distro's makes sense. www.o.o becomes an interesting case where we likely want some balance of both because most people hitting it are probably interested in the distro's. Although everything else the project does should be covered there somewhere somehow.
Unlike other distro devs, we can't spend the entire page bragging about the distributions though, unless we send them off to some other page first. This also gives us the opportunity to send people links to the distributions page instead of project page if they want to learn more about the distributions, and send people links to the project page if they want to learn about the project instead of various scattered wiki pages.
An alternative to what both you and Vincent are talking about which is probably more friendly to new users is have a simple landing page which mostly focuses on the distro's at a simple level focusing on pushing people toward software.o.o for more detailed info. Then it also has a reasonably clear link to "Other things the openSUSE Project does" which sends people to a new opensuse-project.org (or some other similar url). There are alot of "things" within the openSUSE Project these days and listing them all on our main landing page is probably going to confuse new people. Having an extra "project" url then makes it easier for us so we have one url for when were mostly talking about our distro's and one for talking about the larger project in general. Cheers -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Hi Martin, Thanks for your email and the ideas collected!
- Write articles or article series for computer magazines and web sites targeted to the general user
I addressed that a few minutes ago in a separate email.
- Improve the slogan. The German translation sounds like machine translation and is not appealing. One idea which came to my mind was "openSUSE: Get it! Use it! Be part of it!" linking to the download, the documentation and the community, resp.
Yes, the German translation sounds "roboty". But that's not something rooting from the slogan itself but imho. We should just make translation more human.
- Improve the links in the Tools section. They go directly into some quite deep pages instead of first telling what this is. E.g. YaST: yes, the linked page tells a little bit what this is. But when you go to `Documentation` you're already at developer documentation level. Keep the user in mind!
Yes. I'd like to have a page on opensuse.org for every part of the whole project: Leap, TW, OBS, openQA, Kubic, YaST, Kiwi. That would need some restructuring of the whole opensuse.org which in general I'm very open to.
- Contributing: are Code and Hardware really the two options? Put more focus on the community!
Yes, absolutely!
- Generally: read the page with the eyes of a user who has heard of openSUSE recently and now wants to try it out. Give her/him everything she/he needs!
As said above I'm very open to that and would like to tackle that. Last time I tried there was common sense that it's not reasonable to do that unless the name change vote is through. So I guess now it's about time. vinz.
Am Montag, 13. Januar 2020, 18:45:21 CET schrieb Martin Winter:
- First, write openSUSE the right way! At the German version it is spelled OpenSUSE :(
I don't think that's right, it should be called "openSUSE" in German or any other language as well since it's a proper noun[1]/Eigenname[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun#Brand_names [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenname also refer to https://www.fehler-haft.de/wissen/firmennamen.html regards
* Maximilian Trummer <maximilian@trummer.xyz> [01-15-20 09:44]:
Am Montag, 13. Januar 2020, 18:45:21 CET schrieb Martin Winter:
- First, write openSUSE the right way! At the German version it is spelled OpenSUSE :(
I don't think that's right, it should be called "openSUSE" in German or any other language as well since it's a proper noun[1]/Eigenname[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun#Brand_names
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenname
also refer to https://www.fehler-haft.de/wissen/firmennamen.html
regards
DEFINITELY -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
participants (6)
-
Martin Winter -
Maximilian Trummer -
Patrick Shanahan -
Simon Lees -
Stasiek Michalski -
Vinzenz Vietzke