Hello !

I'm mostly a windows user, with occasional double boot experiences (and then, Ubuntu), and a nice trend of converting WinXP family users to a customized version of Xubuntu that won't confuse them too much.

As winamp's support is drawing to a close, I thought I could, why not, try to see if my favorite Linux music player would, perhaps, have a Windows port.

So I googled "Amarok for Windows".

The following is a frank and strongly negative user feedback, to report website issues. If you're one of the persons who can fix that issue, or if you know one of these persons, that's for you ! Please don't take it badly, I view my post as friendly, constructive criticism, why would I spend ten minutes on it otherwise

- Google showed me THIS first, and that was practically the only relevant result : Amarok 2.7.0 available for Windows now | Amarok

- This page mentioned potential drawbacks for windows (No CD playing ?!?), so I was a bit wary. But, on top of all, this page lacked
. a list of all the pages for releases, there was no way to know if there were more recent releases or not. I tried changing the URL, http://amarok.kde.org/en/releases/ : error 404, too bad.
. a place where one could actually leave a new comment
- So I clicked the Amarok logo, in the upper left part of the website, which led me to the home page

- From there, I clicked the Download link, which led me to this wiki page. Candid critics : this page is not a wiki, this page is a download page. As a CMS it may work as a wiki, but actually giving it the "wiki" name, this is very confusing.

- On that page, in the "Other operating systems" paragraph, I click the windows logo. In there, a little jewel that got me scratching my head during two seconds, in the table of contents, this :
Contents
[hide]
1 Dedicated Amarok installer
2 Version history
3 2.8.0
... what ? version 3280 ? Or 3.2.8.0 ?
Maybe a slight CSS change to add a thingy to the bullet lists would be helpful

- And, my final critical note, the explanations given when we click the anchor for 2.8.0 aren't as complete - far from being as complete - as the explanations that I first found on my first viewed Amarok webpage.
For instance, to know that there is no CD playing, I would have to scroll as down as the lines for the version 2.7.0. Could there be other important unsolved issues that are mentioned even below this ?

**

And that was it for the negative feedback. Once again, I don't want to annoy you guys, it's just that, well, there are issues that open a field for improvement, and as a fresh visitor, I thought I could mention them, to help

ecchioli wrote:But, on top of all, this page lacked
. a list of all the pages for releases, there was no way to know if there were more recent releases or not. I tried changing the URL, http://amarok.kde.org/en/releases/ : error 404, too bad.

Erm, you are not supposed to do that? Sorry, but why would a user do this? The only logical thing to do is to go to the main page.

ecchioli wrote:. a place where one could actually leave a new comment
- So I clicked the Amarok logo, in the upper left part of the website, which led me to the home page

Logical, and from there you can leave a comment. Just because you did something strange doesn't make our website bad.

ecchioli wrote:- From there, I clicked the Download link, which led me to this wiki page. Candid critics : this page is not a wiki, this page is a download page. As a CMS it may work as a wiki, but actually giving it the "wiki" name, this is very confusing.

- On that page, in the "Other operating systems" paragraph, I click the windows logo. In there, a little jewel that got me scratching my head during two seconds, in the table of contents, this :
Contents
[hide]
1 Dedicated Amarok installer
2 Version history
3 2.8.0
... what ? version 3280 ? Or 3.2.8.0 ?
Maybe a slight CSS change to add a thingy to the bullet lists would be helpful

Well, open your eyes: this definitely is a wiki page, as it is run with mediawiki, and it gives links to the download mirrors. What you are doing here is hairsplitting, because you ignore how we organise our web sites, I can't take this seriously, sorry. All our technical and community pages run in a wiki, so it is easy to edit by contributors. Those are separate from the website exactly for this reason.
...

ecchioli wrote:And that was it for the negative feedback. Once again, I don't want to annoy you guys, it's just that, well, there are issues that open a field for improvement, and as a fresh visitor, I thought I could mention them, to help

How about contributing instead of criticizing? That is how Free Software works, so get involved.

Please, don't overreact. I could have shrugged it off and walked away, I wanted to help in the only way I could, this is a contribution in its own manner, remember

- there's a difference between "bad" and "misleading". You may discard the opinion of someone who never came before, but, isn't it worth taking into consideration how a total newcomer and newbie to your site could react, while you being used to here may not notice quirks, rather than feel attacked even though no intention to hurt or attack was present ? Sure, you may disagree and conclude it's moot as a criticism, but once again, don't get mad, simply disagree.
- the number one landing page from Google users on a potentially big topic, "amarok for windows", is an outdated (2.7) page lacking mentions of more recent updates, and lacking a self-generated list of the other version release pages. Maybe there's a 2.8 version of this landing page somewhere, with full details and perfect for a newcomer, but I couldn't find it, so I have no idea.

My reaction is harsh because right now I am the only one handling web sites, release articles, download pages, the complete wiki and the handbook. Sorry if you think I am overreacting, but the state is how it is because nobody has time to do all the work, so if you really want this to improve, get your hands dirty, because that is the only real way of helping: by doing it.

* Google doesn't show an article "Amarok 2.8 on Windows released" because that article doesn't exist, as the release note for 2.8 includes the Windows version, both were released at the same time. The 2.7 article was an exception as it was released on a different schedule, and we simply don't have the time nor the manpower to make articles for each individual OS release. Contributors needed. There currently is exactly 1 (one) developer working on the Windows release, and he already does all the coding work and doesn't have time for the documentation and the web site and the download page.

* If you find the download page misleading or whatever: it is a wiki, hence open for change and everybody can help editing it, so again: if it is in that state, nobody had time to improve it, you can help any time.

* whatever documentation you seem to miss is not there because nobody had time to write it. Again, we welcome people who actually help, that is how Free Software and Open Documents work.