[Mageia-marketing] Mageia product naming/scoping

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hi Patricia,

and thanks a lot for your insights.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 20:19, Patricia Fraser <trish at thefrasers.org> wrote:
> I'm conflating answers to package naming and website stuff together,
> because I think the two have some cross-over.

To some extent. But the product ought to live without this website,
and the website is not only about the final (but about the process to
get there, and go beyond). At some point, we may even consider to have
a dedicated website for the product, but we're not there yet.

> One of the reasons a person new to Mageia will visit the site is to
> find out about Mageia and its various flavours/iterations, and
> whether they fit the visitor's use case, or appeal to their wish to
> join a project. So, whatever we call the "products" <shudder>, we
> need to communicate about them really, really effectively.

Totally, yes.

>> Goal of this topic is double:
>>  * study/propose/find a name for the product as such (Mageia? Mageia
>> something? something?)
>
> Skirting around this for the moment, except to say that I favour the
> style Mageia {flavour} {n}; can our names follow the Mageia-Cauldron
> lineage maybe? Alchemy for the one where you have to roll your own
> kernel... 8-) I'm afraid I don't find the explication on the wiki
> very helpful - are we going to have flavours, for different use
> cases, or just what is it we're naming?

I may not have been very specific on what is meant by a "use case"
here. It's not about targetting a gamers group, or a developr group,
or a hitchhikers group, etc. It's more about how experienced one is
(not at all, or to some extent) and how the linux distribution is made
available for testing/installation: install DVD, live/install CD or
USB key, netboot install, etc.

This, because at this point at least, the only kind of "flavour" we
would have is this: how to download and use the very same product
(that is, the same tree of packages, available either through a
physical medium, either through the network).

Well, that's true for the ISO meant to use live or install the system.
It's a little bit different for the pluggable storage (USB key for
now) that provides a different experience: you can use it live,
install it _and_ have a persistent storage for your data.

So my naming question, to frame it better (and feel free to indicate
me how/where to make this more clear on the web page) is more about:
 * how do we name those different access/install experiences? the same
(Mageia) + a casual description (DVD, LiveCD, netinstall, minimal,
mobile)? (I favour this, but) or more inspirational names?
 * and how do we frame them to the new visitor that wants to "download
Mageia" ?

> Whatever "products" we have on our list (I hate that word. Can we
> find another, less commercial generic term for the various flavours
> of Mageia?),

We could, but "product" is the result of some "production". Nothing
commercial in this. "artefact" wouldn't qualify I guess. No particular
idea here.

>        - most of this info should be available from the packagers -
>          can we ask them to give the comms team a heads-up in some
>          way when they add/change things, so information on flavour
>          pages can be updated?

That would rely on checking each package changelog and getting in
touch with the packagers. I don't know how to put some incentive (or
how to integrate these changelogs) as to make this more easily
informative. I believe mageia-app-db work done by Stormi can help a
lot here.

> - have a progression from less to more technical/detailed info - links
>  to package info, for instance, especially the Drak packages and
>  their derivatives and other Mageia/Mandriva specialist packages -
>  I've had msec installed for umpty years and I still haven't ever
>  found decent documentation!

Yes! To find the right balance, and delivering it as a useful, clear,
to the point doc, still attractive and welcoming. We can do it. We can
do it. There's a lot to learn from Rails and similar modern web dev
tools online documentation that is far ahead.


Romain