Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 15:41:08 +0000 (GMT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: Joel Dahl <joel@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Remko Lodder <remko@FreeBSD.org>, doc-committers@FreeBSD.org, Marc Fonvieille <blackend@FreeBSD.org>, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: www/share/sgml header.ent www/en/layout/css layout.css www/en index.xsl Message-ID: <20061204150810.P40536@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <1165244130.691.40.camel@localhost> References: <200612031944.kB3Ji1Ma081957@repoman.freebsd.org> <45732F01.6040204@FreeBSD.org> <20061203223415.D69580@fledge.watson.org> <1165244130.691.40.camel@localhost>
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On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Joel Dahl wrote: >> Hmm. I would really prefer we keep the highly visible top-of-page link for >> the Foundation while the details are sorted it out, rather than removing >> it. The Foundation is about $140k in the red on our annual budget right >> now, and we're in the throes of a fundraising campaign to try to raise the >> funds to pay for next year's developer travel, conference sponsorshop >> (AsiaBSDCon, EuroBSDCon, BSDCan), developer summits, etc. I appreciate the >> need to go about things the right way, hence our contacting doceng to >> request the change > > Contacting doceng is definitely not the right way to do it. > > Instead, sending a request to www@ with the above information about the > foundation fundraise would be a far better thing to do. I would add the > link to the foundation instantly if I see such a request on www@ (your mail > sat in doceng's inbox for a week before anything happened according to Marc, > so I really don't see how that can be considered the fastest solution). I'll let you and docmgr sort out your own disagreement over whether they gave the right advice or not without my involvement. > Anyway, right now we have three links to the foundation on the front page: > one in the news box, one at the bottom, and the fresh link Marc just added. > We also have a "Donate" link at the top which leads to the donation page > where you can find some additional info about donating to FreeBSD/The > Foundation. This is not ideal at all. > > I'd like a link on the front page that leads _directly_ to > http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ with the text "Donate to FreeBSD" > or something equivalent. Where should we put it you might ask? Well, remove > the "Text size: Normal / Large | Donate | Contact" string from the top of > the page and replace it with the link I just suggested. The Normal/Large > option is broken anyway and we could put the contact link at the bottom of > the page instead, next to the legal stuff. I think we should avoid conflating several independent but related notions; I'm certain further refinement could be used. We're discussing four links here that have to do with four different concepts: (1) The link between the FreeBSD Project and the FreeBSD Foundation. There are really two goals here: to reinforce the relationship between the project and the foundation in the eyes of the reader (up with "Community", "Developers", etc), and to bring more traffic to the Foundation web site through primve placement. For example, in the Old World Order, it was actually quite difficult to find out about the Foundation and evaluate its legitimacy by visiting the FreeBSD.org web site. A major sponsor might easily look at the page and say "Foundation? Is it even related to the Project?", which is undesirable. While the immediate goal is to raise funds, the Foundation is about more than just fundraising, it's also about sponsoring activities, and drawing the visitor to the more general Foundation pages (and not just the donations page) is important. (2) To solicit donations. The current arrangement is pretty non-optimal, and other than pointing out some problems I'm not entirely sure on the best way to fix it. From my perspective, there are several issues at work here: - Clicking the Donate link leads to a long complicated page about how the donations liaison team operates, requiring several paragraphs of reading to find out how to give something to the project. This information is all useful, but sorting the links to donate money to the Foundation and hardware to the Project to the top of that page would make it a lot easier to actually donate. - Visually, despite being placed in nice spot on the page, the Donate link is essentially lost. A clearly placed "Donate now!" link on the FreeBSD.org front page probably makes more sense -- I'm not sure it would best fit visually and am happy to leave that to someone else. I see this as quite a different notion from the Foundation link, since (a) not all donations go through the Foundation and (b) it fails to distinguish the notion of the Foundation from the notion of donating to the Foundation. (3) The news item on the fundraising drive -- I see this as no different than any other news item, with the intention being to highlight on-going stuff. The link here is directly to the current fundraising page, and the fundraising drive is definitely "News", in as much as a current release is news, a new developer is news, etc, and has to do with directing web sitereaders to something particularly new or interesting. (4) The trademark acknowledgement. The text itself is required as part of protecting the trademark whether or not the Foundation name is a link. Given that the screen real estate is used whether or not it's a link, making it a link probably does make sense. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge
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