I think from a design perspective we should try to make the features and documentation pages look more different from one another so users are less likely to mistake the different types of docs for one another. We can definitely address this more in the site redesign. I can come up with further iterations of those pages for the site redesign so we have a couple different options to talk more about.
I also think from an information architecture perspective we should probably feature the official end user documentation at a higher level than the features pages so users would be more likely to find the end user documentation first and then find the features pages if they dig a little deeper.
We could also feature different documentation user guides that are more tailored to the different types of users who might use oVirt.
I'm curious to hear others thoughts on this.
Best,
Laura
Hi,
TL;DR: please don't direct users to feature pages -- direct them to end-user documentation instead. And maintain content separation between end-user documentation and technical docs like feature pages.
...
Lately we've cleaned up documentation on
ovirt.org, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts about it. As a user experience focused person, I really believe that clear and helpful documentation is crucial to the project's success. I've also seen outdated documentation be a source of extreme frustration for our users.
In the distant past, most of oVirt's documentation was written by developers on a wiki, typically in the form of "feature pages." Feature pages are basically technical design documents with occasionally some user help sprinkled in.
With oVirt 4.0, we put a great set of clear documentation, written by technical writers, on the oVirt website (which was also converted from a wiki to a regular static site). This documentation is up to date with 4.2, and we'll get the 4.3 content out there soon.
and it should be considered the authoritative place for users to access our documentation.
Feature pages, on the other hand, are (now) for developers. When you hear the term "feature page", think "technical design document." Most users should not be interested in this content.
It helps to think about the personas.
1. oVirt admins -- the person who sets up oVirt on Day 1 and 2. This is the person who cares about and will read the Installation Guide and the Administration Guide. These live under /documentation, e.g.
2. oVirt users -- the people who use oVirt to create, manage, and use virtual machines, etc. This person will care about and read the VM Portal Guide, User Guides, and such. These also live under /documentation, e.g.
3. Developers -- you and I, and occasionally highly curious and technical admins. These people might care about how the project works under the hood -- high level designs, code flows, etc. Persona 2, oVirt users, do not care about these details when they are learning to use oVirt, so end-user documentation should not be polluted with this type of content. This content now lives exclusively under /develop, the developer's section of the site.
Let's help our users by directing them to the end-user documentation, not to feature pages. If you would like to contribute end-user documentation, it should go under /documentation and not in a feature page. If you build a new feature, the technical stuff goes under /develop/release-management/features/ and the end-user stuff goes under /documentation.
Feedback welcome :)
I'd like to add another issue which might be worth discussing now, also
in light of what you suggest re different design. This is: How do we handle
the history of version changes?
Suppose at some version X a new feature is added. We obviously want a
feature page for it (its design) and eventually a doc page for it (perhaps
a few, or only one or a few mentions in existing pages).
Then, at a later version, a new feature is added, which in terms of content
might be worth its own feature page (or not), but is very closely tied to
the first feature. We might have here two quite opposing views:
1. All features have new feature pages, existing feature pages are not
updated once they reach "100% done" state (reality is obviously much more
complex, but let's ignore that for now).
2. Feature pages can and should be updated, and include inline the changes
done per version.
And related to that:
1. Documentation pages are per-version, and are never updated after the
version is obsolete. With each new version we copy (/branch) and create
a new version of the documentation, and update only the latest version,
or simply update in-place (and then rely, in theory, on things like
archive.org, for people that need/want to see documentation for older
versions).
2. Documentation pages reveal the history. When we update them, e.g.
adding a section for a new (sub-)feature, we mention in-line "available
since version X". This is similar to how e.g. python or ansible documentation
sites look - although they actually do both - both have subtrees per
version and mention in-place - which might be best.
So far, in practice, we did something somewhat similar to (1.), but
it was never an official policy (AFAIK, at least).
I personally tend to prefer both (2.)'s, but less strongly so for the
first one - I can live with many more feature pages, although not sure
is scales well.
Best regards,