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Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 17:10:32 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
From: Joshua Slive <joshua@slive.ca>
To: docs@httpd.apache.org
Cc: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: [users@httpd] Please fix http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html
In-Reply-To: <20040321183922.GG22233@linuxmafia.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.58.0403211701480.2276@bronfman504>
References: <20040321045840.GB22228@linuxmafia.com>
 <Pine.WNT.4.58.0403211018360.2276@bronfman504>
 <20040321183922.GG22233@linuxmafia.com>
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On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Rick Moen wrote:
> > I do have a suggestion for you: Absolutely the first thing you see on
> > your page is your email address, while the actual content (including
> > disclaimer) doesn't come until you page-down about five times.  I bet at
> > least 90% of the problem would go away if you simply moved your email
> > address to the bottom of the page.
>
> I'm pretty sure the reason Eric doesn't do that is that the format is
> enforced by the DocBook Document Type Descriptions (DTDs).  However, you
> could link, instead, to my pure-HTML version of the essay, at
> http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/smart-questions.html , which I've
> rearranged a bit (moving version history to the bottom).

> Mind you, I have to deal with this sort of
> idiotic behaviour _every_ time any software project, anywhere in the
> world, links to the essay.  So, I hear from the cretinous element of
> hundreds of software communities.  Inevitably, they see nothing wrong
> with what they've done, and "just need help with one question".

We will change our links as you request, but let me just reiterate my
suggestion in slightly more forceful language.  Given our user to
developer ratio, we here at Apache have quite a bit of experience
trying to design pages to avoid problems with clueless users.  Your page
(especially Eric's version, but even the one you suggest above) is very
poorly designed for that purpose.  Clueless people do not read web pages;
they skim.  So you need to make sure that the first thing they see when
they skim is the disclaimer, and certainly *not* your email address.  Your
email address should go at the bottom.

I'm fairly certain that such a change would have a much larger effect than
any note we put on our end (which clueless users may just skip over
anyway).  Plus it will help you for every project that links to your page,
not just ours.

Anyway, thanks for the great resource.

Joshua.

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