The new pages seem fine to me. Good job to the team. Sure, it will take some getting used to the new look and where to click, but in a few weeks or months we'll all be used to the new layout. - Bernie -----Original Message----- From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2018 4:04 PM To: ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Why the change? (was Re: Today's transition for www.ietf.org) Dear colleagues, Full disclosure: I was a member of the IAOC when some of this work was approved, so to some extent I bear some responsibility. On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 09:28:15PM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > The Number 1 thing to remember when revamping a Web site: nobody cares > about the revamping of your Web site. It seems to me that this discussion was one we had during the last round, and I think that many IETF participants seem not to have absorbed the other part of what was going on with the website alterations. The reason for this was not to make work, but to solve a problem. > People want the Web site to work for whatever task they have to do, > and preferably, they want it to work the same way as before. (This is > probably why many IETFers did not test the new site: they didn't want > to have a new site.) It is certanly true that people want the site to work for their task, and when they have a workflow they don't want that interrupted. But the previous discussion of this pointed out that there was a significant constituency of potential users of the website to whom it was not addressed at all; that was a problem. People who don't know what an IETF is sometimes have occasion to need to know, and what they will do is put "IETF" into their favourite way of searching and end up at the front website page. If that front page is overwhelmingly arranged to meet the needs of those who already know what an IETF is, then the new curious people will effectively be turned away. This has been a problem for the IETF in its relationship with others: it makes it harder to persuade others that the IETF really is offering useful, contemporary standards for how the Internet does and should work. Therefore, IETF participants are being asked to endure the inconvenience of moving their most-used stuff to a different place, so that the other audience can be addressed. I think it reasonable to take issue with broken links (which I believe are being rectified -- i.e. I think this must be a bug, since the plans were always not to break any links). I think it would be nice if some of the participants in the discussion would take care to state such issues without suggesting that people involved are clueless. But I do not think it reasonable to claim that there was no reason to undertake this effort: the reasoning was well documented and was put before the community repeatedly. I, at least, never heard an argument that we should not explain ourselves to others in the world who might be interested, and in terms they might have a hope of understanding. So I think it was appropriate to redesign the front page, even though that causes inconvenience for each of us (including me). Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx