As I understand it, humans haven't the same facility to sniff out stuff that's buried as dogs do. Too bad. Me, I can pick up a trail and follow it very efficiently thanks to my nose but FP the other day had to dig about on a website in all manner of confusing directions before she found what she was searching for.
The website in question is Too Big. Worse still there are a lot of Dead Ends on it and apparently Unfinished Projects, with no indication of when content might be added or up-dated.
There are however plenty of e-mail addresses FP can write to in order to ask questions but she told me that if she wanted to spend the rest of her life in fruitless pursuits, she'd resume training me to run through weave poles or jump a hurdle.
I thought that was a bit mean actually, as I did learn to jump the hurdle in the end. I also had to dig the longest hole in dog history to bury that metre long hurdle pole and finally bring that training to an end. However, I can still find it because I can still smell it! It isn't a hyperlink into nothingness or (worse) a long list of Irrelevant Fora! I also check it regularly to ensure no fox has pinched it, so it isn't treated as a task with no finish either.
If you have a website, here's my advice:
- Make sure you control it, don't let it control you
- Make sure people finish what they start on it
- Make sure you build it with the user in mind
- Make sure you test it on people who aren't part of building it
- Make sure you get rid of unused parts of it.
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