Always Improving is hopefully a way of life for most Makers. I fully agree. Let’s keep talking about what’s not clear and how to make it more clear without accidentally making it more confusing.
When a new user opens up their Spark Core, they are greeted with this URL:
https://www.spark.io/start
This in turn takes them down the LAUNCH pad of sorts…
Step 1 brings you right to the DOCs… and a whole world of organized knowledge awaits you there.
Step 2 brings you back to the DOCs to help you out with an example, assuming you didn’t read it already from Step 1’s entry point.
Step 3 shows you where to code and program your Core from the Cloud.
The Resources link below step 3 only brings you to the Forums after you have visually scanned past the Documentation and Troubleshooting links.
Let’s say you dismiss all of that, and come on the Forum asking for help… you WILL get it.
I don’t see at what point you will say to yourself, “Wow, this is unorganized and lacking some serious sub-categories… I’m going back to Arduino.cc and I’m going to buy lots of stuff on eBay.com”.
All that said, new users are greeted on the Forum after signing in with:
A good read later and I know how to use the Forum:
I could see amending this Welcome message with a more Pointed overview on everything Spark has to offer… from Forum Etiquette to Documentation, to Forum Categories to deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.
If you click the Categories button you will get a general description of what each one is for:
These could be filled in a little more, it wouldn’t hurt.
And there’s this discussion happening about adding TAGs to posts… that would help too:
What else?