zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[James Keenan <jkeenan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

I appreciate Brendan’s concerns and I’m glad he cares enough to voice them. I love Zim and have been using it as my work diary for years now. If the zim-wiki falls under the heading of a “project”, I’m willing to be a helper/co-maintainer/dogsbody/scapegoat/you-name-it. ☺

Jim

From: Zim-wiki [mailto:zim-wiki-bounces+jkeenan=cwmars.org@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of snarf@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2016 1:55 PM
To: zim-wiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Zim-wiki] Is Zim Desktop Wiki Dead? -- problems with Zim's web presence

In the Zim chat room I had two people wander in independent of each other and ask if the project was dead, in the past 12 hours.

There are some problems with Zim's web presence:

  *   How do you find release dates, starting from http://zim-wiki.org/<http://zim-wiki.org/index.html> ?

     *   You have to click on Contribute, then the first link on that page gets to the Launchpad project. Then you click Code, then lp:zim, then Browse the Code, then CHANGELOG.txt.

     *   If you don't think to look at Contribute, or you're not a habitual Launchpad user, you will probably fail to find the changelog this way.

     *   If you open the project URL from Contribute, then go to the Code tab, and then actually read the paragraph at the top of https://code.launchpad.net/zim , then Zim REALLY looks dead: http://zim-wiki.org/bzr/pyzim/ . If you don't know Bazaar, you'd assume this shared folder is empty and the ".bzr" subfolder is just junk.

  *   The Downloads page has dead links to "Source" and "Packages". Actually no they're headings, but they look like links that got unlinkified.

  *   Zim is a desktop wiki. What is this "Wiki" page? The information scent < https://www.nngroup.com/articles/wrong-information-scent-costs-sales/ > of that top-level navigation link is nil. People aren't clicking it.

Recommendations:

  *   Immediately create a "History" or "Change log" top-level page on http://zim-wiki.org/ that is a placeholder directing the user to view http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~jaap.karssenberg/zim/pyzim/view/head:/CHANGELOG.txt (or transcludes it directly into the page on the main web site).

  *   Maybe make a comment about the release cadence of the project on the Downloads page.

  *   Fix this paragraph on the Launchpad project's Code page: "Zim hosts its code at http://www.zim-wiki.org/bzr/pyzim."; It needs to say something about the fact that this is a Bazaar repo, not the kind of live web view you'd expect from GitHub or BitBucket.

  *   Rename the "Wiki" navigation link on the main web site to "User-Contributed Documentation" or "Community Documentation".

  *   Add a top-level page for "Mailing List" that points to the mailing list home page AND to directly to the mailing list search form. (Wait ... CAN you search the mailing list archive? I can't find it.)

  *   A chat room user wanted a screencast that demonstrates critical features of Zim. Something like that must be in the mailing list archive somewhere. It should be saved in a safe location and promoted on http://zim-wiki.org/

Who is in charge of the main web site and the Launchpad pages? Is there anything I can do to help with these communication issues that are driving users away?

And I hope no one is offended by this post. I'm trying to be helpful and point out that we are probably losing prospective users due to a few design issues in our public web presence.

Brendan Kidwell