[CLD] [Gardeners] Re: Project Proposal: Package and Resource Directory

[Paolo Amoroso]

[I'm moving the discussion here from the gardeners list]

Jean-François Brouillet <verec at mac.com> writes:

> 1
>
> But let me qualify. Most of the gardeners work is more
> about form than about contents. As it should be.
>
> The goal is to make it easy for new-comers to get
> at the information they want.
>
> In this respect, the current CLD has some huge effort
> ahead in order to achieve usability. The layout is confusing.
> The information is both there (if you dig enough) and not
> there (lost in the noise)
>
> There are people who store their knowledge in their head,
> and people who store their knowledge in the world (Don Norman)
>
> Since the CLD is *presenting* knowledge on *behalf of* users,
> everything should be made to render the information structure:
>
> - obvious
> - easy to parse
> - easy to navigate to
> - easy to measure/evaluate w.r.t one own's goal
>
> The current CLD design/layout fails on all those counts.
>
> On a more general CLD note, steps should be discussed about
> how one can possibly change/propose/amend the navigation/
> usability.
>
> Since the HTML contents is automatically generated, it would
> be a first step if we could have access to the template so
> as to try and modify it.

The CLD has been publicly available for less than a week, so a few
rough edges are to be expected.  Indeed, my formal project proposal:

  Package and Resource Directory
  http://wiki.alu.org/Package_and_Resource_Directory

also includes as a potential task providing bug reports and feedback
on information presentation and layout.

See section "Hot to Contribute" of the proposal, where I suggest to
send such contributions to the common-lisp-directory mailing list.  I
haven't elaborated more on how to provide such feedback there because
it would probably be beyond the scope of that document.  And also
because there is probably not much to add: the list seems to me a good
way of discussing improvements and sending suggestions.  See for
example this post by Pierre-François Gomez, where he includes a
modified layout:

  A few notes after using the cld
  http://www.lispniks.com/pipermail/common-lisp-directory/2006-January/000016.html

As I have said elsewhere, I think that in the early stages of CLD it
is more important to add entries to the directory, which immediately
contribute to its value as a resource.  While it takes many users to
add many entries, the information and presentation can be easily and
globally updated for the whole site based on feedback.


Paolo
-- 
Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log - http://www.paoloamoroso.it/log