[Bf-docboard] Blender.org education/help section

[John Blain]

Reference: Ton's request for volunteers to assist with fixing the Blender
education section.


 Thanks for the reply from Luca.


 I have been pondering what to do and if I could assist in this.


 To participate I feel that some direction should be given specifying the
objective of the update to the Blender Education section. In the first
instance it would require a definition of what the Education section is and
then it would probably need a broad outline of what is to be achieved.


 A very simplistic approach would be to consider that the Education section
is everything that is linked to the 'Education and Help' tab at the top of
the blender.org homepage.


 Before venturing down the path of the Education links perhaps consideration
should be given to the Blender homepage itself. I feel that the waters are
already a little muddied since the homepage ( blender.org ) is the starting
point for everything Blender which includes 2.50+ and 2.49 and everything
prior to 2.49.


 With the introduction of Blender 2.50 and the new Interface there has been
a dramatic change.


 Perhaps the Blender homepage ( blender.org ) should now be revised to be
2.50+ specific and be remodelled to distinguish it from everything prior to
2.49. It of course should include a regressive link to the old site.


 In my view it is simpler and easier to write new rather than try and
remodel the old.


 Blender 2.50+ is a new baby. Let it grow by itself without prejudice.


 On the subject of my Blender Book I concede that it is linked from
wiki.blender.org/index.php/Books but I'm damned if I can find any link from
either blender.org or wiki.blender.org that gets me to that page. The only
way to get there is to enter the address. I'm probably blind so please point
the way.


 The chance that a new user will enter a search for '*Wiki *Blender Books'
when looking for 'Blender Help' or a 'Blender Manual' is remote. A search
for 'Blender Books' doesn't help either.


 Sincerely John Blain


On 15 May 2011 22:56, mindrones <mindrones at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi John!
>
> On 05/15/2011 09:03 AM, John Blain wrote:
>
> > As you may recall from earlier correspondence, I have written a basic
> > Blender Manual and have attempted to have a link placed on the Blender
> > website. I have also attempted placing a link on the Blender Wiki Page
> > and have submitted to Blendernation. All attempts have been to no avail
> > and constructive criticism has been minimal . This has not been
> encouraging.
>
> First off, your book is linked and well exposed in the books section of
> the wiki, see:
>
>
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.5/Books#An_introduction_to_BLENDER_3D_a_book_for_beginners
>
> It's even on top of the list! :)
>
> Searching "blender 2.5 books" Doc:2.5/Books is 4th on that list, so all
> in all it's quite easy to get to your book.
>
>
> That being said, your book is huge and very well written, so I'm glad
> that you offered your help :)
>
>
>
> > At this stage I am thinking that the existing Blender Education should
> > be left in place and perhaps a new 2.5/2.6 Education series should be
> > created. There is a huge amount of existing work which, although
> > outdated, is extremely useful.
>
>
> Agree on that, but this is also a huge cause of bad ranking of the wiki.
> At some point we should accept that blender 2.3 docs are just old and
> let them go.
>
> If you search for "blender documentation", the first link you get is
> http://www.blender.org/download/documentation/
>
> My hope is that
>
> www.blender.org/download/documentation/
>
> could be moved to
>
> http://www.blender.org/education-help/documentation/
>
> and cleaned up from those very old links, especially
> http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/
> and
> http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlII/
>
> For two reasons:
>
> 1) these pages, have been mainly ported over the wiki long time ago and
> are obsolete
>
> 2) *more importantly*, these pages have a better ranking then the wiki
> pages (probably because they've been online since the beginning and
> because they're pure html)
>
> Some suggestions about these pages:
>
> 1) delete them
>   this would break the bookmarks all over the world :), OR
>
> 2a) add a robots.txt to tell the search engines not to index them
> anymore, AND
> 2b) add a permanent redirect to the correspondant wiki page so that
> search engines know that that page is no more but instead the new page
> to be shown in search results is the wiki page.
>
> I would love to take the responsability to do (2b), because I know the
> wiki structure well.
>
>
> > Having registered my interest and before accepting any responsibility, I
> > would wish to be advised who is the authority for approval and criticism
> > of a new Blender Education section. If review is to be made by a
> > nebulous body of critics then the path forward could prove to be
> > disastrous.
>
>
> I think it is part of the game and often discussions are a very valuable
> help.
>
>
> > On 15 May 2011 01:30, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org
>
> >     Same goes for the tutorial section;
> >     http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/
>
>
> IMHO the documentation part (including tutorials) should be ported over
> the wiki and redirected there from blender.org.
>
>
> --
>
> I'm not sure I can write actual contents in this period, but I can offer
> my help for wiki work.
>
>
> It is especially important that we eliminate any overlapping contents
> blender.org/wiki, because having 2 similar pages from BF competing for
> the best ranking isn't very useful and creates confusion while searching.
>
> For any topic that comes to mind, for a certain version of blender,
> there should be an unique source of documentation.
>
> For those situations, I'd prefer that we discuss here.
>
>
>
> Regards,
> Luca
>
> _____________________________
>
> http://www.mindrones.com
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