[documentation] The handbook organization

[Charlie Lowe]

Kieran Lal wrote:
> Putting together a much better About section for Drupal would probably 
> have a bigger impact and more people would read it.   Re-organizations 
> are time consuming and without some audience research to back them up, I 
> would question if this was a useful effort.

I've been thinking about what you have said. Reorganizing is only one 
part of this and probably the easiest. Much stuff needs to be rewritten 
and moved out of the About section if it is to be an effective marketing 
tool. We can't think like documentation writers here (which has been the 
problem). My suggestions would be to

* Decide who our audience is--who are we trying to market Drupal to--and 
what parts of Drupal to feature for that audience. At present, there is 
not a unified rhetorical strategy based upon a collective understanding 
of who our audience is.

* Take a look at how most sites organize an about section. We can 
anticipate user expectations by looking at how information is presented 
to them at other sites.

* A much simpler organizational structure. Something like
   - Overview
   - Community
   - Support
   - Requirements
   - Learn More

* Right now, I think the About section might suffer from information 
overload--too much stuff. Some of what is there now could be included in 
other sections and linked to. Others--Marketing Resources and Drupal.org 
Site Mainainers--aren't really helpful for marketing to a newbie. They 
could go somewhere else entirely. Videocasts is a genre, not a keyword 
topic. Videocasts should be linked to where (and if) needed in the About 
pages. Drupal.org feeds--that's an information resource for once you 
have decided you are working with Drupal.

* Then if we want to go to the user, certainly usability testing would 
be good for determining if the documents that are in the section are 
accessible the way that they are organized. But more important testing 
for this type of document is focus group research. Reactions to what is 
in that section are what are most important to understand.

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If there were three or four writers who wanted to work on this and get 
it done in the next month or two, I would be glad to take the lead.

Charlie