[wdmmg-discuss] Ask Where Does My Money Go? Request for comments and additions on requirements

[K Corrick]

Hi everyone,
Lisa, Rufus and I have been working to put together a set of requirements
for 'Ask Were Does My Money Go', and it's role on the site. See
http://ask.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/en/ (please ignore that the navigation is
temporarily in German :-) )

I'd really appreciate any thoughts, additions and comments:

*The role of Ask*
Ask WDMMG potentially sits at the heart of the WDMMG project, together with
the Data Store, as it has the potential function of answering questions
about the incoming data (eg. answering questions such as 'How can we make
our spending data open and useable?')  and the outputs of what can be done
with the data and visualisations (eg. Can we use the dashboard images on our
website? How do I query the data store?), as well as very specific questions
about the meaning of the results.

Therefore the potential users of this part of the site are very varied. So
looking at Ask WDMMG as above, rather than at who it is for in terms of
exact audiences, is also a bit easier as we're unlikely to ever predict all
the people who might come to us.

*Functionality*
To make Ask as useable and useful as possible to the widest number of people
we'd suggest the following:


   - An FAQ section ideally split into FAQs from a data input and an output
   (we're still thinking through a more friendly term for each - ideas please!)
   - Search function - tags quickly become useless in this instance
   - Consider changing 'Tags' to 'Hot topics' perhaps, or something more
   user friendly? Currently that tab is a little obscure. Perhaps consider
   having a tag cloud on the Ask home page?
   - Enable embedding of images into answers
   - Enable more details to be added to the Profile Pages eg. what motivates
   me? my role? - this will give a bit more authority to the answers, and help
   people also understand who is asking a question, their background etc. to
   ensure the most relevant response
   - Easy login - ideally not OpenID, just user name, email and password

*Other considerations & resources*

   - Do we have any existing documentation that we could link to, rather
   than having to re-create the wheel? eg
   http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
   - Consider how to plug the questions into the existing email community to
   increase the likelihood of questions getting answer eg. autopost to the
   email list, or have set of volunteers who manage Ask WDMMG, otherwise there
   is possibility that no one answers questions and it becomes a blackhole.
   - Should we aim to answer any question that comes in within a reasonable
   time frame?
   - Do we want to close a question once it has been answered
   satisfactorily?
   - Once we have a lot of questions coming in we may want to theme them


*Look and feel*

   - Aim to make it look as friendly and easy to navigate as possible - it
   shouldn't put people off from asking questions
   - Integrate with existing WDMMG site design and navigation
   - Include recent questions on the WDMMG Home page and/or in the template
   so that they appear on other pages - increasing likelihood of use and
   engagement
   - Happy to write some copy


Anything we've forgotten?

Kathryn
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