All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

nms Support

davorg on 2004-07-21T09:12:13

I finally got round to implementing the changes to the nms support pages that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

Any suggestions for improvement gratefully received.

Suggestion

2shortplanks on 2004-07-21T11:22:15

First, switch the order, so 'general public' option comes first. Now change it so it reads from the general public's point of view.
  • The web site I was using is broken and I want to report it to the person that is running it.
  • I was setting up a nms script on my site and I'm having problems with it.
Okay now the pages themselves. Remember that a confused user thinks that *we* are part of the site that they are visting, so on the "I want to report a problem on the site" section you need to explain first of all who we are and what we do.
You've reached this page because the broken site has downloaded one of the scripts we offer for free download on our website and installed it badly.

We don't run the site that you've just come from, and we can't fix the problem ourselves. You need to get the people that run the site to get in contact with us so we can advise them on how to fix their site.

If you report the problem to us yourself we will be unable to help fix it.

This needs to be visually distinctive from the rest of the text. It needs to be the one thing people read on the screen. Remember, people don't read web pages, they skim between sections. Most people will skim the page, see there's no link to report the error and then click the first link they see which will take then to the page with a form on, which they'll fill in without reading the rest of the page.

I'd finaly recommend moving the form from the bottom of http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/support1.html and having it on a seperate page linked from the bottom of the previous page. And I'd have a linking page saying "Are you the person that runs the site [YES/NO]" before it, and if they click NO then you don't take them to the form page.

Re:Suggestion

Aristotle on 2004-07-21T11:44:20

Adding my vote for all suggestions — top notch.

Use short sentences

btilly on 2004-07-21T15:01:00

Passive, convoluted sentences confuse people. Active sentences are clear. The first page can and should say something like:
Is the problem with a website that you run?
- YES
- NO
After that, I'd suggest looking for anything that can possibly be (mis)read as a subtle insult and rewriting it to not be insulting. An insulted person doesn't learn - in fact they generally become impervious to learning and hence more irritating. For instance at the start of http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/support1.html I'd strongly suggest making the FAQ section read something like this:
You probably are not the first person to have the problem that you're having. Solutions to the most common problems are in our FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). Please read that before asking any questions on the support list.

People often have problems with errors of the form, too late for -T option. This is addressed here and questions on this will be referred back there unless you demonstrate that you have read that section.

You'll note that the insult about reading ability is omitted, and the language is short and direct. That makes it more likely that people will read it rather than skimming for, "Where can I get a human? Ah, this nice form right here at the bottom."

Re:Use short sentences

davorg on 2004-07-21T15:13:50

Bah. You'll take all of the fun out of supporting nms users :)

You are, of course, right tho'.