[jdev] Jabber Community Site : Call for Help

[Justin Karneges]

On Sunday 03 October 2004 05:19 pm, Richard Dobson wrote:
> > - There should probably be no more than 4 clients in the client listing.
> > This
> > way it will be possible for the user to make a quick and easy decision.
> > It
> > would probably be a good idea to mark the topmost item as "recommended"
> > with
> > a gold border around the entry or something.  This way the users don't
> > even
> > have to think if they don't want to.  Offering direct download links
> > would also be good, so that you don't confuse users by sending them to a
> > foreign website.
>
> Limiting the amount of clients in the listing to an arbitary value is
> probably a bad idea, your idea of what the best clients are maybe very
> different from others, what would be better IMO is to have a list of
> clients which includes any which pass a certain set of criteria, i.e.
> certain features such as disco support would be required, also the list of
> clients would be sorted using ratings of the clients submitted by users
> (e.g. like this site http://www.dyndns.org/services/dyndns/clients.html)
> which allows a more balanced level of opinion of what are "the" best
> clients and not what could be an unintentionally biased choice.

Yes, a baseline criteria plus user ratings is a good way to create an unbiased 
listing.  However, I still say this list should be chopped off at a small 
number like 4 (and actually, I'd be surprised if even 4 clients qualify on 
each platform anyway, depending on the criteria).  Maybe there could be a way 
to view the full list if desired, but we would present the trimmed list to 
newcomers.

Imagine if the listing was just the jabber.org list with ratings.  Yikes, I 
think we'd scare everyone away. :)

-Justin