Clean up "connect with us" page

[Mark-LaCroix]

General The headers should be links. Icons would be nice.

MSP GameDev Slack This copy should reflect that "requesting an invite" means you will automatically get one. The way it reads now it seems like there's an approval process. Changing it to simply "click here to join" or similar would be an improvement.

Also, the header should be re-titled just "Slack" to align with the format of the other headers.

Discord The "if slack is not your thing" phrasing doesn't reflect the purpose of Slack or the Discord. They are not competitors (or rather, we don't want them to be, even if, yeah, it feels like that sometimes).

IGDA Parent Organization This link starts a recursion loop.

Ice Cold Games This site is no longer being updated. Its directory serves the same function as the one on this site. Either we do not need to link to it any more, or we should remove duplicated information from this site and point people to Ice Cold Games for that information.

Facebook We should remove this link from the site. We don't use it, and anyone who finds us there will see the very helpful "we don't use this" message directing to other sources. There's no reason to send people there on purpose.

[mgrider]

General The headers should be links.

I'm not convinced.

Icons would be nice.

I intentionally removed the icons we had on the old site, because they were inconsistent and looked bad. I agree it would be nice to have something visual on this page to make it look better, but I think every section should have an image or none. (I don't feel super strongly about it tho.)

MSP GameDev Slack This copy should reflect that "requesting an invite" means you will automatically get one. The way it reads now it seems like there's an approval process. Changing it to simply "click here to join" or similar would be an improvement.

Also, the header should be re-titled just "Slack" to align with the format of the other headers.

This is good feedback! (Although "click here" is never good copy, IMO.) Done.

Discord The "if slack is not your thing" phrasing doesn't reflect the purpose of Slack or the Discord. They are not competitors (or rather, we don't want them to be, even if, yeah, it feels like that sometimes).

They are definitely direct competitors, but I see what you mean. I updated the copy to: "There is a Twin Cities Gamedev Discord that we use for our online events, as well as an IGDA Twin Cities channel in the IGDA Discord."

IGDA Parent Organization This link starts a recursion loop.

I'm not sure what you mean here. If you literally mean there's a redirect, I'm not seeing it. If you just mean all that's there is a link back to our site, you're definitely right. We have control over that content, and we mostly want to use it to funnel folks back to our website. But I still think it's worth linking.

Ice Cold Games This site is no longer being updated. Its directory serves the same function as the one on this site. Either we do not need to link to it any more, or we should remove duplicated information from this site and point people to Ice Cold Games for that information.

The site was updated regularly as recently as last year. I'm not convinced we should remove our linking just yet.

Facebook We should remove this link from the site. We don't use it, and anyone who finds us there will see the very helpful "we don't use this" message directing to other sources. There's no reason to send people there on purpose.

I think it's fine to link to it. There are folks who use facebook, and if they want to be active on there, I also think that's fine. I'm definitely not one of those people, and I did move it to near the bottom of the list for this reason.

[cadomac]

IGDA Parent Organization

I personally think including this for contact information is redundant. I think we should link to that AND the actual "apply to be a member" potentially under its own page, e.g. "Become a member of IGDA" or "Membership" or something along those lines.

Would it be worth putting these under sub-headings? E.g. "Social Media", "Direct Message", "Events & Information", etc etc for a more hierarchal structure on the page? Might be good for accessibility needs.

Discord & Slack I'm pretty sure Discord has a widget and Slack may as well, but those may be interesting ways to provide more information and a cool interactive element for joining these groups.

Headers should be links I might need a little more explanation to get what you're saying. If you just mean literally "make the headings links to the contact info we're sharing in their descriptions" then I can see where you're coming from and I don't necessarily disagree...I guess I just think, if we were to do that, we should rework some title copy and/or rework the layout of this page.

[mgrider]

Oh shoot, it looks like I didn't push my changes to this screen. I'll try to remember to do it tomorrow when I'm back on my work computer.

Would it be worth putting these under sub-headings?

I have definitely thought some about this. Right now they're pretty arbitrarily ordered (more or less by the ones I'd prefer folks actually use). I also think it might be worth thinking some about splitting them up into "reasons you might want to contact us" rather than just "ways you can contact us".

[Mark-LaCroix]

If you just mean literally "make the headings links to the contact info we're sharing in their descriptions"

Yup, that's all. Just looking for any way to reduce cognitive overhead for people.

[mgrider]

I did make the headers links, FWIW. After all the changes I made here, I'm going to close this issue. Obviously feel free to open a new one if there are additional changes you want to discuss.