Spins vs official content

[Máirín Duffy]

Mike McGrath wrote:
> We're working to get the pages together for F8.  Where should we put 
> links to what things.  We've got 2 click to live cd or torrent for the 
> official content.  And thats from fedoraproject.org.  This is MUCH 
> simpler then previous releases and can be done due to changes in 
> mirrormanager. 

Wooo!!! Awesome!!!

  The question I have is where to put official spins.  I'd
> like to put a link on the get fedora page that links to 
> spins.fedoraproject.org to get the torrents from there.
> 
> Concerns:
>   1) Keeping the get fedora page simple and clean

I think folks are going to be confused as to the difference between 
spins and actual "real" Fedora, right? Is the Fedora Desktop spin the 
"real" Fedora? Or is everything just a spin now? Would it be more 
confusing to have a "real" Fedora and then some spins, or no "real" 
Fedora everything is a spin?

(See what I'm saying here?)

Depending on that, I think is how the page should be laid out for F8. 
The page design/layout right now is I think built with an underlying 
assumption that there is one Fedora to get, right? So it probably needs 
be redesigned a bit. Here's the current flow:

Get Fedora (there is only one to get?) => are you fast or slow? => How 
do you want to get it, bittorrent, mirrors, or network install? => oh 
my, there are actually a lot of choices i have to make here, fedora, 
arch, version #, etc.... overwhelming!

E.g., to simplify, we're kinda saying: "what would you like to get?" => 
"how would you like to get it?" => "you weren't specific enough up 
front, really, what would you like to get?" => "here it is"

I think we should try to say:

"What would you like?" => "How would you like to get it?" => "Here it is."

But when there are many choices to pick from for that first question :) 
It gets tricky.

>   2) Brand dilution between official and non official spins

Well... are non-official spins going to be linked off of there?

>   3) There could be 30, 50, 100 re-spins this time next year we just 
> don't know.

I think the ideal way to handle this is categorization. E.g., if we have 
say 5 spins for f8 (i don't know if that's the right number) then we 
just list them out all on one page. If for f9 we get say 30... just 
categorize them - that might be pushing the boundaries of how many you 
could have linked off of one page... it gets up to 100 for f10... have 
categories where you click on the category and are brought to a page 
with just the links for the spins only in that category. Well over 100 
though and you're gonna want a directory and search engine. :)

~m