Opened 5 years ago

Last modified 5 years ago

#30780 closed Cleanup/optimization

Make "Getting Help" documentation much more prominent. — at Version 2

Reported by: Shai Berger Owned by: nobody
Component: Documentation Version: dev
Severity: Normal Keywords:
Cc: Abdul Aziz Tetteh Triage Stage: Ready for checkin
Has patch: yes Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: yes UI/UX: yes

Description (last modified by Shai Berger)

Issues like https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/issues/947 show up very often, I think they are more common than actual website issues. Each and every time we close such an issue with "go get help in proper channels", it's a little failure -- for the submitter, of course, but also for us. I think we can try harder to make the correct channels more prominent. Here's a list of potential action items:

  1. The whole "Getting Help" section on the documentation front page sits only in the side bar, below obviously-less-interesting stuff like the navigation tools. It is easy to miss it entirely.
    1. We could make it one of the first sections in the list -- I suspect that the first three sections should be "First steps", "Getting help", and only then "How the documentation is organized".
    2. I'd also consider making a link to .../faq/help/ float on the documentation page, like the language and version selectors do now.
  1. The tutorial mentions "where to get help" in an admonition very close to its beginning, but then it is never repeated, and it is easily forgotten by the time anyone actually needs it.
    1. Make the admonition link to the faq, and mention the links to get help which are present on every documentation page
    2. Repeat the admonition, at least once on every tutorial page
  1. (moved to relevant repo) The ticket-creation form for the Django code -- the one I'm filling in now -- has a list of things for a (first-time) submitter to consider, under the heading "Please read this first"; I believe this list greatly reduces the amount of support-tickets filed on this tracker. A similar thing can be done for the djangoproject.com repo using issue templates.

Change History (2)

comment:1 by Mariusz Felisiak, 5 years ago

Summary: Make "Getting Help" documentation much more prominentMake "Getting Help" documentation much more prominent.
Triage Stage: UnreviewedAccepted

I agree with points 1.1, 1.2, and 2.2. I'm not sure about 2.1. The 3rd point should be open as an issue in code.djangoproject.com (see e.g. Better UX for website newticket page).

comment:2 by Shai Berger, 5 years ago

Description: modified (diff)

I believe you meant djangoproject.com so I opened an issue there.

The idea behind 2.1 is to make the admonition more memorable by providing a non-disruptive action that can be taken immediately without really cutting the workflow. This would work especially well with 1.2's floater: "Hey, just glance at the bottom-left corner, there's a link there you should be aware of, and then continue reading".

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