RedesignWebHomeOfSupport

The WebHome of Support drives me nuts.

Use Case:

If I know that my question/problem can't be solved by

• looking at the docu (because I already did that)
• asking someon at #twiki irc (and noone knew the answer)
• trying my best to do it myself (and failed)
• searching the existing questions (and found nothing)

...then I have a big problem.

Why? Beacause I can't find that god damn "ask a support question" link.

It happens everytime I want to aks a question. I'm scanning the topic over and over again and everything I see tells what to do something else then asking a question. Unfortunately this is what I want to do....

I do understand that we need to lower the number of support question by telling the people to do the things that are mentioned in support first.

But in the described use case my most important task is to find that f****** link (sorry for beeing rude). And I fail everytime I try to find this link.

As a result I'm always getting angry and frustrated. I like TWiki very much so I don't want TWiki making me angry anymore

I don't want to complain without having an idea on how to do better... so I'm trying to come up with a better design idea.

Any help, ideas, input, pointers to similar discussion or decisions are welecome...

-- Contributors: CarloSchulz - 18 Jul 2007

Discussion

why not press the CTRL + F and search for the word 'ask' with your browser? This works well for me ...

-- KeithHelfrich - 18 Jul 2007

sure, but that can't be the answer to find something important. This would be an unconditional surrender on the infomation overload on this topic

-- CarloSchulz - 18 Jul 2007

and this doesn't help at all if I don't the links correct name or spelling.

-- CarloSchulz - 18 Jul 2007

I agree the link should be more visible. I would make this distinction:

1. Check existing answers. Perhaps someone has answered the question you have. [Search box]
2. Ask a question.
   But prepare before asking by checking the answer in the documentation:
   • Read the TWiki documentation and supplemental documents
   • Read the known issues of TWiki 4.0
   • Read the browser issues
   • Still not found? Read the support guidelines and Ask your question
   • You can also come around our #twiki IRC channel to get hands-on support question. Be a good netizen: check our policy first.

-- ArthurClemens - 18 Jul 2007

yep, something like this. We need to get rid of all these endless lines of blablabla. People don't read they just scan for information and Support isn't scannable.

-- CarloSchulz - 18 Jul 2007

Carlo - as a cluterbug techy, I'd suggest that you make a very simple, re-factor of the Support as a working proposal, and we can just adopt it

-- SvenDowideit - 18 Jul 2007

sounds good. I'll do that...

-- CarloSchulz - 19 Jul 2007

Done with the first draft! Please provide some Feedback...

NewWebHomeForSupport

-- CarloSchulz - 19 Jul 2007