Classifieds menu

[Rod Clark]

> > Who's changing the order of things in the menus???  Bad idea!
> > People get used to typing in a certain number to get to a certain area, 
> > and if that is changed it just frustrates users.  
> 
> I second all complaints about the menu changes.

Anitra, 

   The menu changes are made partly in response to people's 
suggestions and complaints about how SCN isn't as easy to use as 
it could be, and partly because of changes in SCN's service 
offerings. Several items on the menus have changed recently, 
which means that menu numbers have changed as well. 

   The present menus should be stable for now. And because of 
several comments that frequent changes are undesirable in 
and of themselves whether or not they're improvements, I'll 
refrain from making any menu changes for a while. But some 
changes did need to be made. 

   Because Pine is now well tested and is recommended as the 
default mail program, Pine has moved from its former location, 
as item number 8 on a third level menu that was reached by 
picking item number 12 on a second level menu, to replace the 
Freeport mailer as the first or default mail choice. 

   The old Freeport mail services have been renamed and 
moved from "Read Your Mail" and Send Mail" at the top of the 
mail menu, to a place below Pine on the menu. These former menu 
options were sufficient when they were the only mail services 
available, but as placed and labeled on the menus they were 
leading people to the FreePort mailer instead of supporting the 
changeover to Pine.

   Because SCN's information content has almost all moved to the 
Web, Lynx was moved from number 5 on a subsidiary menu to a 
more obvious place on the main menu, to make reaching SCN's 
content easier. 

   Some people think Lynx shouldn't be so easily accessible - 
that users should be forced to go through whole menus full of 
"WARNING - READ THIS FIRST!!!" material before starting it up. 
Others think that all of that material should be put somewhere 
obvious where newbies can find it when they need it, but regular 
users appreciate faster ways to use the system, and the main 
path to SCN's content shouldn't be delayed or obscured. 

   Until not long ago, the first group, let's call them the Cod 
Liver Oil school of design, always won. They still do, often 
enough. Because of this, everyone (well, almost everyone - see 
below) has to wade through two screens of miscellaneous 
introductory material and three screens of the "message of the 
day" every time we log in, complete with a screenful of "art" 
with tall buildings and mountains, and ceaseless warnings to 
delete this or that file, and an annoying procession of "End of 
File - Press Return to continue" and "Press SPACE bar to 
continue" and "End of File -Press Return to continue" and "Press 
Return to continue" prompts in between.

   This is all material that is Good For You, and that can never 
be made optional. Because you are so fortunate as to have been 
adopted by Cod Liver Oil parents.

   Someone (was it you, Anitra?) suggested a few months ago that 
a clean, fast login prompt would help people who want to log in, 
do something quick and log off again, with a minimum of "oh no, 
not all this again" to contend with. As expected, the systems 
people completely ignored that idea. But it's a good one, so 
let's revive it.

   To make a speedier login possible while still appeasing the 
Cod Liver Oil faction, maybe there could be a note on an 
otherwise quick, clean opening screen like this:

------

    Seattle Community Network

        To see service bulletins, start Lynx from the 
        main menu and pick 'Message of the Day' 

    You have new mail.

    Press Return.
--------

   All the rest of it could just go away, to sighs of relief 
from all of us who only want to get on and get off again.

   This of course assumes that Lynx would be on the main menu at 
all. Someone from the Hardware committee actually removed it 
one day, and put it back on a lower level menu as the sixth or 
so item there. Why? So that everyone would have to go 
through a lot of extra menu items with a boatload of "WARNING - 
READ ME FIRST!!!" material before using Lynx.

   "Hey! You there.Yes, you! Put that fork down. You know the 
rules. You can't have your dinner until you read these three 
pages of explanations and rules about how to eat your dinner. 
At each and every meal, and each and every snack, each and 
every day. Otherwise you might grow up to be an uninformed user. 
Now listen, I'm warning you - put that fork down!" 

   Except of course for the main proponents of this theory, the 
Hardware people, whose shell logins provide (you'll never guess) 
a clean, fast login directly to the system prompt, so they can 
get on and off quickly and don't have to wade through all of 
that stuff. The rationale is that they wouldn't get as much work 
done otherwise. Ahem. Sounds good to me. Do as I say, not as I 
do. Isn't that grand?

   The result of too many endless repetitions of this 
"preventively parent you stupid users from accessing these tools 
too easily" philosophy is that many of those users who have a 
choice, especially Information Providers, do put their fork 
down, stomp out of the room and go elsewhere. Yet some SCN 
admins still insist on prescribing this as "good for you because 
 it takes longer to get to where you can use these dangerous 
tools like Lynx and Pine and it's very important that you can't 
use them without passing through the Hall of Parental Warnings 
first."

   SCN has a lousy reputation for usability. If all of the 
admins had to make do with only those menus and tools that the 
users have, for a few months, my guess is that the system would 
rapidly improve into something that would have lots more 
neato-cool, functional and accessible tools that would be 
available to all of us. The technical term for this is "eat your 
own dog food." And it works. But we don't do it, for some 
reason. 

   To answer your question about who maintains the menus, some 
of the people who work on various menus these days are Rod 
Clark, John Johnson, Michael Hanson and Ken Applegate. I believe 
Chanh Ong and Randy Groves have also edited some menus recently. 
Tom Sparks, Nancy Kunitsugu, and others have also contributed 
menu updates in the not too distant past. I am the culprit for 
the particular menu changes you're complaining about.

   If you have any suggestions about how to improve the menus, 
we're listening. 

Rod Clark
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  From the Listowner  * * * * * * * * * * * *
.	To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org		In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
END