dubuntu-team team mailing list archive

[jay <jay.27182818@xxxxxxxxx>]

i've introduced the levels to assist beginners. for example when one
wants to select and ide for c++ and he/she sees say 20 different ide's
it will make a confusion. beginners need to know for sure that their
choice is absolutely right. actually levels are what experienced
programmers would advise to beginners. there are only three levels so
it'll be quite easy to determine which level to assign to a certain
program. if we run into difficulties we can reduce the number of levels
to two - beginner and advanced. what about hiding packages that belong
to higher levels, here you're right. we can just gray those packages so
that users will see them, their descriptions, rating etc. this will make
much more sense than just hiding. we can also add an ability to sort
packages depending on their level so that e.g. 'easy' tools would go
first. this is all just for beginner. advanced users will always consult
google, different forums etc. in order to choose the correct program.

best regards,
jay

On Thu, 2008-12-11 at 09:22 +0200, Charl Wentzel wrote:
> Hi Jay
> 
> I would be careful with levels.  My experience is that it actually
> "hinders" people from exploring and learning.  Let them rather choose
> how far they want to go into the selection process.  A user will
> quickly realise when he no longer knows what's going on and stop going
> deeper.  The adventurous will continue deeper.  
> 
> By limiting the dept with a level right from the start may unknowingly
> limit scare people from choosing "advanced" even though the may be
> quite capable.  This has been my personal experience.
> 
> Anyway, how do you really decide what is beginner, advanced and pro...
> it really is only an opinion that would differ from one person to the
> next.
> 
> Regards
> Charl
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jay <jay.27182818@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: charl.wentzel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: Dubuntu - Ubuntu for Developers <dubuntu-team@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Dubuntu-team] package selector for devbuntu
> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:16:16 +0200
> 
> one more idea: it'd be useful if we assign 'level' attribute to every
> package in our selection. the possible values can be
> 'beginner','advanced','expert'. scm will show up only those packages
> whose level corresponds to current settings. e.g. for a newbie only
> 'beginner' level packages will be visible. of course we must take into
> account that experts in one field can be newbies in another so maybe
> we'll need to assign level settings to every item from megapack level
> down to category level.
> 
> best regards,
> jay
>