MDN/Archives/Projects/Content/Learning Area

MDN is a well known resource for average and advance users but we are still failing to address beginners needs. W3School and other similar web sites remain a place of choice for them, even if they are flawed. As we have the row material, now we need to turn it into something more appealing for beginners. Organizing the current content and writing the missing parts will be the biggest part of that project.

Objectives

In a more detailed fashion, this project tend to cover the following goals:

• Improve the discoverability of beginner content: We have some existing content but it is pretty hard to find. We need to organize our in a better way for beginners.
• Improve the quantity of beginners content: Will writing we mainly focus on average and advanced user. As a consequence, we lack some serious beginner oriented content. We need to write that missing content and organize it with the existing content to make easier for everybody to access an contribute to it.
• Improve the quality of beginners content: Still, we have some existing content for beginners but we need to organize it, complete it and make it more appealing.
• Make sure beginners are taught well during their journey to the Web: MDN is not the only resource out there to learn the Web. Beyond our own content, we can help discover and found useful good resources to learn about the web. To that, we need to gather and links to the best sources available.

Related metrics

In order to get some rational measurement about the success of our action, the following metrics are suggested:

• Measure the increase number of unique visitor on the beginners content:
  That would be a good sign that our beginners content is easier to reach.
• Measure the increase number of returning visitors on the beginners content:
  That would be a good sign that the beginners content is appealing for them.
• Measure the increase of time per page on the beginners content:
  That would be a sign that more beginners read and learn from that content.
• Measure the decrease of bounce rate on the beginners content:
  That would be a sign that more beginners read and learn from more content on MDN
• Measure bounce to third party resources we selected:
  That would be the sign that more user trust MDN as a reliable source of information regarding third party content.

Extra point:

• Try to gather some direct feedback about the improvement which will be made.

NOTE: This project will be action driven rather than time driven. It means that we will do whatever is needed to reach our goals, whatever the time it will require. However, in order to not to be swamp into an endless project, it will be cut into small actionable steps that will allow to measure progress as often as possible.

Critical path

To ensure the success of the project, the following schema detailed its critical path.

Critical path

It can be summarize as follow:

1. Identify what's missing to MDN to make it suitable for beginners
2. Inventory existing content available for beginners on MDN
3. Organize content
4. Write missing material and build missing features

Aside idea

The following ideas are not critical for the project but could be some very nice enhancements.

• Add a "search per level" option on our search engine

Get involved

Any one who wish to get involved with this project is welcome. This page will provide information about the project and its progress. Everything is discuss directly on dev-mdc mailing list. Schedule and progress are summarized on the mdn-drivers mailing list.

Jeremie is the resource leading that project, feel free to contact him for any question. He's available, for sure, on IRC every Monday (European time) on the various MDN Chanel (#mdn, #devmo, #mdndev) and more.

Current progress

• Kick off