Am 28.07.2014 09:18, schrieb Gary Willoughby:
> On Sunday, 27 July 2014 at 16:59:15 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
>> I really wish you'd stop with this destructive attitude. Yes, the web
>> design part is not ready for prime time, but it's definitely a big
>> step forward already in many aspects, IMO.
>
> Since when is the truth destructive?

"completely the wrong way to design anything.", "current design look ridiculous", "poor amateurish design", "i wish you would stop right now" - all of those comments look pretty destructive to me. Truth or not doesn't have to have anything to do with being destructive or constructive. Most of the time there is a good truth and a bad truth and just focusing on the bad side can be pretty destructive.

What I'd wish for would be something like s/i wish you would stop right now/i'd suggest to .../g - or maybe pledge for a professional web designer? Just something that brings us forward instead of just promoting stagnancy.

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 09:16:44 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

You said you don't like it and you were heard the first time

>
> I'm speaking the truth which often hurts.
>

Yes and I don't see w0rp running off and sulking about it either.

> Your problem is you are not able to take any criticism whatsoever against this piece of work. The design is awful, period.
>
> I have nothing against you personally and i think it's good that you are initiating this effort but the design is the first thing that should be addressed and in no way be an afterthought. I apologise if i sound terse but usually in my line of work shoddy efforts have to be address upfront and with prejudice.

w0rp et. al. have asked for your contributions in art/design because you say you know how to do a better job.

>
> The very first thing you should of done is to create mockups (in photoshop, etc) of what each page should look like and make sure the design can accommodate all the content. Once the design is approved then implement the site. The backend is inconsequential, use whatever you are comfortable with. Vibe.d, LAMP it doesn't matter. Users don't care about the backend. What matters is the user experience (especially within the documentation) and that is what should be addressed in a thoughtful professional matter. This is not optional or something that should be done along the way.

Stating something is crap in a volunteer project is useless unless you can follow it up with something equally useful.

For an engineer you sound just like our marketing team at work: Always ready to produce some warm and fuzzy ideas but light on the specifics and actual work.

/uri

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 09:16:44 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> Your problem is you are not able to take any criticism whatsoever against this piece of work. The design is awful, period.

Criticism is worthless if you are not ready to actually do something about it - providing detailed list of necessary changes at the very least. D development has always been about going and getting stuff done - same principle apply here. If you have professional web development experience that may help here - start helping somehow. Otherwise this criticism is just distraction.

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 11:16:39 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> going and getting stuff done - same principle apply here. If you have professional web development experience that may help here - start helping somehow.

You need to define and agree on a process first. If not you will have to redo the site 10 times before getting to the end result. Then you will have to redo it whenever someone decides to add a feature that contradicts the design/layout, because they assumed that it would be easy to add later.

What are the key requirements?

What is the primary user base (front page, doc pages etc)

What are the main target platforms?

What is the intermediate format?

What is the primary use scenarios?

What are the key future functionality that it has to accomodate?

What nice-to-haves can we cut in order to reduce work?

Who gets the final word when you cannot get a decision?

etc.

On 7/28/14, 12:29 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> I am contributing but you are completely ignoring me and attacking what
> i'm saying. I've been a professional web application developer for years
> and have a lot of experience with design and UX. Everybody here is
> completely ignoring that fact! You don't even understand branding. So
> what's the point of me trying to contribute?

I've been in similar situations in the past so I sympathize. The one thing I noticed gets the point across is to just do good work and just show it. People otherwise ignorant of what goes into a piece of work _can_ often appreciate a compelling end result.

Andrei

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 16:58:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 7/28/14, 12:29 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
>> I am contributing but you are completely ignoring me and attacking what
>> i'm saying. I've been a professional web application developer for years
>> and have a lot of experience with design and UX. Everybody here is
>> completely ignoring that fact! You don't even understand branding. So
>> what's the point of me trying to contribute?
>
> I've been in similar situations in the past so I sympathize. The one thing I noticed gets the point across is to just do good work and just show it. People otherwise ignorant of what goes into a piece of work _can_ often appreciate a compelling end result.
>
> Andrei

It is frustrating because i want this to be done well as it could really help D take off. If it's done poorly we will be the laughing stock especially as our immediate competition is other programming sites.

http://new-www.haskell.org/
https://www.python.org/
https://developer.apple.com/swift/
https://www.ruby-lang.org
http://www.perl.org/
https://www.dartlang.org/

If the new D site isn't at least as good as any of the above we have failed. I'm up to my eye balls in other projects at the minute so i can't contribute any code.

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 11:35:21 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
> On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 11:16:39 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> going and getting stuff done - same principle apply here. If you have professional web development experience that may help here - start helping somehow.
>
> You need to define and agree on a process first. If not you will have to redo the site 10 times before getting to the end result. Then you will have to redo it whenever someone decides to add a feature that contradicts the design/layout, because they assumed that it would be easy to add later.
>
> What are the key requirements?
>
> What is the primary user base (front page, doc pages etc)
>
> What are the main target platforms?
>
> What is the intermediate format?
>
> What is the primary use scenarios?
>
> What are the key future functionality that it has to accomodate?
>
> What nice-to-haves can we cut in order to reduce work?
>
> Who gets the final word when you cannot get a decision?
>
> etc.

At last somebody else who understands.

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 10:38:12 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> "completely the wrong way to design anything.", "current design look ridiculous", "poor amateurish design", "i wish you would stop right now" - all of those comments look pretty destructive to me.

No, that's the truth! You can sugar coat it all you want but at
the end of the day you have to be blunt and honest if you want
professional results.

I did in fact start conversing with w0rp in a more congenial
manner but his childish attitude was when i decided to stop
pulling punches. My first comment was to suggest some javascript
libraries which was ignored. Then i pleaded with w0rp to use the
correct logo and colors. Which was then dismissed as he thought
*his* logo was better than the official one.

See the first reply in this post in which i outlined my position:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/txdzebqxljlvjremintv@forum.dlang.org

and tell me again who is being destructive. In that same thread
Walter is quoted as saying: "All excellent points, and I agree
with you on all of them. And I like the current logo, and want to
keep it." and yet w0rp still insists on going forward with this
terrible design.

> Truth or not doesn't have to have anything to do with being destructive or constructive. Most of the time there is a good truth and a bad truth and just focusing on the bad side can be pretty destructive.

You're joking right? Anyone can see it's terrible and needs to be
done better. There are no versions of truth!

> What I'd wish for would be something like s/i wish you would stop right now/i'd suggest to .../g - or maybe pledge for a professional web designer? Just something that brings us forward instead of just promoting stagnancy.

I tried but was immediately dismissed.

On 7/28/14, 10:25 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 10:38:12 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
>> "completely the wrong way to design anything.", "current design look
>> ridiculous", "poor amateurish design", "i wish you would stop right
>> now" - all of those comments look pretty destructive to me.
>
> No, that's the truth! You can sugar coat it all you want but at
> the end of the day you have to be blunt and honest if you want
> professional results.

No, if you want professional results you have to do professional work.

Andrei

Am 28.07.2014 19:25, schrieb Gary Willoughby:
> On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 10:38:12 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
>> "completely the wrong way to design anything.", "current design look
>> ridiculous", "poor amateurish design", "i wish you would stop right
>> now" - all of those comments look pretty destructive to me.
>
> No, that's the truth! You can sugar coat it all you want but at
> the end of the day you have to be blunt and honest if you want
> professional results.

That may be the case in a professional setting where everyone is payed to do the work. But in a community of volunteers this probably just leads to no results at all, because everyone involved gets discouraged. I'm not talking about sugar coating things, but about constructive criticism, suggesting improvements in addition to pointing out what is bad.

> I did in fact start conversing with w0rp in a more congenial
> manner but his childish attitude was when i decided to stop
> pulling punches. My first comment was to suggest some javascript
> libraries which was ignored. Then i pleaded with w0rp to use the
> correct logo and colors. Which was then dismissed as he thought
> *his* logo was better than the official one.

My perception was that he stated that his logo was just a placeholder and that someone would still have to get it right. The colors, as far as I can see, match the original logo pretty well, even though there are less highlights.

>
> See the first reply in this post in which i outlined my position:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/txdzebqxljlvjremintv@forum.dlang.org
>
> and tell me again who is being destructive. In that same thread
> Walter is quoted as saying: "All excellent points, and I agree
> with you on all of them. And I like the current logo, and want to
> keep it." and yet w0rp still insists on going forward with this
> terrible design.

There have been quite some different opinions on the logo topic, and personally I think that removing the "button" border is absolutely fine, while shape and color are important not to alter without very good reason. My understanding was that w0rp was basically intending to just flattening the logo, although I see that changing the shape has also been part of the discussion. My perception also was that Walter understood that the logo was to be completely changed instead of just flattened, but I may be completely wrong, of course.

Anyway what's far worse is that the licensing situation of the current logo isn't clear and worst case it could mean that we'd have to switch the logo. But sorry, this is getting off topic.

>
>> Truth or not doesn't have to have anything to do with being
>> destructive or constructive. Most of the time there is a good truth
>> and a bad truth and just focusing on the bad side can be pretty
>> destructive.
>
> You're joking right? Anyone can see it's terrible and needs to be
> done better. There are no versions of truth!

I'm not joking. There are some substantial improvements regarding the global page navigation. The planned search feature would also be a big improvement. The rest of the page is currently modeled after the mockup that got posted by the OP and really hasn't been subject to any deeper thoughts so far.

This is what I mean with the positive truth, and what just bothered me is when you started to completely dismiss the whole project as bad. I just don't like talking in purely black and white, because reality almost never is.

Also, and this needs to be stressed, the major part of w0rp's work so far is about the technical basis. You dismissed that as a minor detail, but it is not. It's a part of the whole thing that also needs to get done and someone has to do it. The good thing is that it is - with the help of good semantic HTML and good use of CSS - mostly independent of the site layout and styling.

>> What I'd wish for would be something like s/i wish you would stop
>> right now/i'd suggest to .../g - or maybe pledge for a professional
>> web designer? Just something that brings us forward instead of just
>> promoting stagnancy.
>
> I tried but was immediately dismissed.

I think that the discussion just too quickly went into an all or nothing argument, which is always difficult to resolve. And I guess this was also at least part of the reason why you stopped with suggestions and why w0rp possibly has troubles accepting valid criticism from you...

Anyway, what about making some quick mockups or design rules that could be used as a basis for a more principled approach? But I have to admit that this forum is not the ideal place to work on something like this. We need a much more structured approach to answer questions such as the ones Ola posted. Maybe using a separate newsgroup or mailing list + the wiki.