Re: Website Confusion

Regarding #2, typically (from the cases I've seen) this seems to be happening 
with people who think they can convert a photo to some kind of cuttable file. 
Personally, I'm convinced it's coming from confusing language on the website of 
some cutting software, which leads them to think they can get a cuttable file 
from the Inkscape website.  But I probably haven't seen every case.

When I contact people who have uploaded photos (as a moderator), I've added a 
comment to the message I send them, that if this is what they wanted to do, they 
will need to download Inkscape.

As a possible solution, if someone chooses the Photo category, could that 
trigger some kind of message that they are only uploading the image to the 
gallery, and that nothing else can be done with the photo?

Personally, I've been wondering why we have a photo category.  There is really 
only one reason someone could use that category, and still be promoting 
Inkscape.  And that is to show the real life usage of whatever they made with 
Inkscape.  I wonder if there would be some way to block photos, but still allow 
JPG formats?  (Although I might not be opposed to disallowing any JPG/JPEG.) 
I'm not sure if just removing the Photo category would do that.  But in any 
case, the vast majority of photos are deleted.

For problem #1 - that surprises me!  Maybe I just don't use proprietary software 
enough to realize that.  I suppose a big message on the main download page that 
you don't need to register, would not look professional?

I could add a problem #3, that there still seems to be some rare confusion 
between my forum (Inkscape Community) and the website.  Once in a while Martin 
forwards me a message where someone is trying to register for the forum on the 
website.  And once in a while, I get a message in the forum from people trying 
to register on the website.  We could solve that by getting the new forum open 
asap, but I'll be sending a separate message about that shortly.

All best,
brynn

-----Original Message----- 
From: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 9:07 AM
To: inkscape-devel
Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Website Confusion

Dear Developers,

This is an interesting brand confusion issue that I want to bring up.
Users who visit the Inkscape website exhibit sometimes some key
confusions which I'm not entirely sure how to fix:

1. That Inkscape requires them to register for an account in order to
download. This is not true, but users have been trained by proprietary
service vendors to register accounts for everything to get access. Help
requests from users who forget their password or can't activate their
accounts indicate that they only wanted to download Inkscape.

2. That the gallery on the website /is inkscape/, this is a much rarer
problem. But sometimes people upload things to the Inkscape gallery in
order to somehow get the website to perform actions or 'use' Inkscape
via a web interface. This is likely because many users are trained to
think of apps as websites and the website offers some abilities which
could be confused for entry points into Inkscape functionality. This
presents as moderation flags, usually people uploading photos and
asking why Inkscape can't be accessed.

These are issues that may get worse as more and more people get
computers which are not-desktops. Phones, tables, whatever chromebooks
are. And I can imagine there might be some simple changes to help
direct people more.

Thoughts?

Best Regards, Martin Owens



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