You make a REALLY good point about user goals. The statement you quibbled with is almost a description of the solution – where the goal is to gain information. I’ll definitely keep that in the front of my mind when incorporating different types of information sources – maybe books and other things will get combined with the articles.

Thanks!

ps: And thanks for the encouragement!

I don’t think you are always searching different sources for different reasons. I often find myself doing research when I am having some problem at work and need ideas for solutions. For example, perhaps my projects are suffering because of poor estimations. I’m looking for a solution to that problem, and early in my searching I’m open to whether that solution might be an article, a book, training, a product or whatever.

Keeping this kind of broader problem definition in mind might evolve your user story from “I want to read about X” to “I want to find out information about X”

On the topic of what an ‘article’ is … I agree that you probably need to pick one type of information source first (like articles) and then move on to the other ones in your list (like books or training). However, I quibble with this comment you made:

>> I’m inclined to treat them differently, because people will look for each for different reasons (I want a to read about X, I want training for Y).

Reading your reply, Scott, I just realized that “find a book”, “find an outsourcer”, “find a great site”, etc. are solutions to the problem “I want to gain knowledge”.

But Tyner Blain will definitely not rate it in an autocratic sense. Once the site is up, I expect to be a user, not super-user. I like the way Kevin Rose approached things at digg. He was just another digger.

Will authors pick? Will readers rate it?With the staff at TB assess it?

Up until now, I’ve been thinking about it solely as collections of (immediately) consumable articles. From a “how do I write at Tyner Blain?” perspective, I believe the best articles are single topic. But that isn’t always true, and is definitely just my opinion.

There are a lot of great references that are not consumable articles:

• Great books to read
• Great companies to hire for topic X services
• Great products for working in field Y
• Great training in domain Z

And probably others too. And all of this stuff is important to all of us who will be using the site.

I’m inclined to treat them differently, because people will look for each for different reasons (I want a to read about X, I want training for Y). I think we could absolutely leverage some of the functionality we will likely build to make it easy for people to “find great books in our niche” etc.

Do you think it would be effective to present these as top-level activities: “find a book”, “find an outsourcer”, etc, and ask people to prioritize them? I personally want to do articles first, and then add whatever is most-valued second [ed: this assumes that articles is of more value than the others]. But if one of the other areas dwarfs articles in terms of what people want, then we will reconsider.

At some level, this is like the start of Amazon. Bezos’ team proposed “al l things” in a big vision of what Amazon would ultimately become, and Bezos played the dictator card and said “let’s start with books.” Then they added the other stuff later, once they established critical mass and credibility.

I’m essentially proposing that “articles” is the right place to start, and we should add others as the community evolves. But I’m happy to be encouraged to rethink that.

Somewhat off the personas topic: I’m wondering what an ‘article’ is. Does it have characteristics? Is it just some piece of knowledge (I’d say: yes), or even just a reference to a piece of knowledge?
Is it important that an article is readily accessible from the site (that would exclude training courses, books, …)? My answer: no, even a hint for a good book or a reputed company would be of help to the personas.