So lets say we do it

[Andreas Mohr]

On Thu, Oct 31, 2002 at 02:11:31AM -0500, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> That is,
> 
> Lets assume for the sake of argument that Alexandre likes my
> 0.8 idea so much, that he releases Wine 0.8 with much fanfare
> next Monday (so we have a good audience), and the news reaches
> Slashdot where a message with a link to http://www.winehq.org
> is posted, in good CmdrTaco fashion...
> 
> And so, let's see what's going to happen:
> 
> 1. 90% of /.ers will click on the link, and WineHQ gets Slashdotted! :)
> 
> 2. People will look for the typical left-side menu:
>     Home
>     About
>     Status
>     Development
>     Download
>     Screenshots
> 
> *BZZT* We don't have any. 5% will drop off here.

Sorry to say that, but in this mail, *you* were talking *some* crap IMHO
;-)

We *do* have screenshots. The About page has some pretty nice screenshot.
OK, it's a minimalist approach, granted, but it does show IE etc.

If you want more screenshots, then you just need to go to the AppDB.
(although we don't mention it yet, so I'll add a subtitle
"for more screenshots, see AppDB" to the screenshot now)

> 3. Then they'll visually search for the word "Screenshot"
> 
> *BZZT* We don't have any on front page. 30% will drop off.
> *I* drop off here when I visit other projects, for crying out loud!
The "About Wine" item *definitely* tells *everyone* that a screenshot
should be found within the "About Wine" section...
If we honoured every stupid link request, then the main page would look
like some huge pile of... err... crap.

We've been asked directly or indirectly countless times to include certain
things on the main page (and we often thought "hmm, this needs quite a
bit of attention, so: put it on the main page ??").

But including everything would be a HUGE mistake.
Instead WineHQ needs a *clean* and obvious organisation (some improvements
might well be possible here, I guess).
And the idea of finding screenshot(s) on "About Wine" is definitely
as good as it can ever get.

> So let's assume that by a miracle they'll discover the screenshots:
> do they make them drool? No, we loose another 15%.
Hmm, k, it could be a bit more spectacular, correct.

> Damn, that's tough! Let's see what happens to the rest:
> 
> 4. Let's download, and try it out
> 
> Do we have officially sanctioned binaries (at the very least
> .rpms for RH, and .deb for Debian)? No. *BZZT* We loose another 30%.
> Again, *I* don't care about stuff that doesn't come as a binary
> .rpm for my RH system. I used to, not anymore.
Well... obviously we don't have enough people who are willing to
enforce a properly maintained package for various architectures.
Instead we've got some chaotic heap of wildly differing packages.
One could argue that this situation helps CodeWeavers' bottom line,
though ;-)

> Fine, some will install what they download. What next? Hm, this
> Wine thing just sits there, it's not that simple. We need to
> read some docs. Back to the site.
> 
> 5. Look at the docs
> 
> Oh, we have some. We hate to read docs, but Wine is cool, so we
> swallow the pill. Only to find out it's out of date!!! What a
> piece of #@$%!
*I* am definitely not the one to blame here :)
(BTW, you got a point here)

> *BZZT* Another 10% drop off.
> 
> Thats 90% drop-off before they really tried it out! The rest 10%,
> go on. So, what do we do with it?
> 
> 6. Look for a list of Win-apps that we can run
> 
> Is there something on the site? No. Blah, too much hassel...
> 
> *BZZT* Another 5% go.
Hmm, I guess it all boils down to having the About page get redesigned
a bit. We should definitely include a prominent link to the AppDB,
and maybe also a separate page with kickass knock-down screenshots...
Does anyone want to give us some ideas about how the page should be
redesigned ?

> (Don't even mention app-db, it's *way* too complicated!)
Huh ?? I really can't follow you on that one...
(ok, it's not a dumbed-down page listing some screenshots and nothing
else apart from that, but it was never meant to be made for dummies)

Which all boils down to the essential question: which amount
of morons does our project need/want ? :-)

> So the 5% left, install wine, install a Win-app, and play around.
> Great, it works! They start learning the utilities, etc., but
> those are in flux, and we change them, and they get PO-ed. Another
> percent, or two leave the fold...

OK, those ~ 90% might be somewhat drastic (after all if you really *need*
to run Windoze apps, you'll be willing to go through quite some hassle),
but it might be rather high indeed.

May I suggest that you'd probably have fixed about 50% of these issues
if you hadn't done this ranting about it, but instead used that time
to fix them ? ;-))

Take it easy,

Andreas