I was thinking about how to organize a guide to using this site. <br /><br /><b>Idea 1</b> - one guide containing the following:<br /><ul><li>A discussion of the basic organization of site content (a brief explanation of the site's organization). </li><li>A layout article describing things on the site and what they mean (the various menus, the online indicators, the tabs, you know, basic things to be seen/interacted with... complete with screenshots and balloon text and arrows). </li><li>A disussion on standards and practices complete with notes on site rules. </li><li>A how-to on the more advanced features of the site (usage of tags, etc). </li></ul><br /><b>Idea 2 </b>- two guides (basic and advanced):<br />Subsequently I've thought it should be two guides: a basic (the first three topics shown in Idea 1) and an advanced (the last topic). <br /><br /><b>Idea 3 </b>- Three guides divided into content types:<br />The site has three conceptual types of content: <br /><ul><li>General Content (project lists, userlists, forums, chat, links, feedback, and support issues)</li><li>Project Content (each with its own: front page, forums, documents, downloads, membership, and support issues)</li><li>User Content (each with its own: profile, private messaging, guestbook, quicklinks, buddy list, contact form for email, and storage space for personal files). </li></ul>Perhaps therefore there should be three guides, one for each one of these, complete with layout/advanced notes for each topic?<br /><br />But then I keep asking myself... are all these really necessary? Use of
bulliten boards/forums and community sites are a fairly intuitive thing
nowadays. <br /><br />But this site is doing some things that (from what I've found) no other site does. That makes me think there needs to be a guide on Project Management - showing all the rules for a project manager that aren't available to the members of his site (such as cancelling and banning members, censoring, addressing project support issue status and severity, and the various uses of the many options now present when editing the options for your project's front page). Should there be a project management guide?<br /><br />Finally... if one or more of these guides are to exist - who's going to maintain them? It sounds like a lot of work, and maybe would be better done as its own wiki-like project where all of us can work on it.<br /><br />What do you all think?
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