[META] Decide who's target audience of the project

[pfalcon]

To properly develop web site, documentation, and project structure overall, it should be decided who's the target audience of the project. Possible examples:

• End users (but these don't care about whether it's open-source or not, and need user-friendly software, docs, and support).
• People who have experience with IP cams already - this would be a kind of walled garden, where only "selected" people communicate (cryptic, not beginner-oriented docs will serve as "walls").
• Video surveillance system vendors/installers - this would be effectively a "startup advertisement", i.e. the whole idea of the project is to sell services/firmware to businesses, and "open-source project" is just an advertisement facade.
• People who have some experience with embedded device hacking (but not specifically with IP cams) and/or people who're willing to learn (and contribute back to the project) - This will assume higher basic knowledge level than just "end user", and willing to spend time on learning project, but still will be friendly enough to beginners and guiding them thru the learning (but will require them to learn, not just blindly follow step-by-step instructions).

Likely, a project will have a combination of the target audiences above, but the "main" target audience should be selected explicitly (and be more or less clear from project site, etc.) - as its not possible to support everyone equally well.

[widgetii]

I guess the fourth group of people in our main target audience

[pfalcon]

I guess the fourth group of people in our main target audience

Thanks, that's what I would think, but I'm definitely biased, as I would think that I belong to that group myself, so look at everything from that PoV.

Ok, so if the target audience are "advanced users without necessary IPcam hacking experience, and people interested to become advanced users", then there're various implications, e.g.:

1. Such people pay attention to details in general (so, it makes sense to both fix "small" issues and encourage people to report/submit fixes for them).
2. Such people understand what's open-source, and pay attention to that matters. So, it makes sense to describe clearly structure of the project, and say what parts are open-source and which aren't. OTOH, I don't think it makes sense to be "shy" about the fact that there're not open-source parts. Any reasonable person understands that 99% of complete hardware products contains some non-open-source parts. As long as it's presented clearly and project encourages interested people to work on open-source counterparts, it all should be fine.
3. It should be kept in mind that such people can't know everything, but are interested in understanding things they're working on. So, for example, copy-paste commands (as would be suitable for "end users") don't work too well for such target audience, it's better to provide some additional explanations and/or references (links) so they could understand it better/learn more.

IMHO, following guidelines like above (and that's not exhaustive list) when (re)structuring site/docs and creating/editing content (and it all doesn't have to happen all at once, but gradually), may help to alleviate feedback concerns raised by some users, and overall make project more friendly for advanced users (not just hardcore IP cam hackers!) and encourage them to contribute.

[themactep]

is this still relevant?