Suggestion for Documentation: Ways of how to add an item

atrusriven

When reading the »Adding Items to Zotero« documentation page (https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero) I realised that a visualization might be helpful in generating an overview of all possible ways of adding an item to Zotero, adding attachments or deriving items from attachments and so on. So, I created a diagram/visualisation which I propose/suggest to add to the documentation site mentioned above. If it does not meet the CI/CD criteria we could consider redesigning it. (At the moment, I am thinking of adding a little legend/caption as an explanation on the types of arrows.)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14645731/i580unirbzhwgg7b6chg.png

atrusriven

Is this the wrong place for suggestions to the documentation? I was told to post it here.

aborel

I don't think it's the wrong place, but it's perhaps not the best time. The Zotero staff is quite busy with the launch of Zotero 7 and adjacent issues. Give it time, someone will get back to you eventually!

aborel

My personal and non-affiliated feedback: some options are recommended more than others, and the order of presentation in the Zotero documentation is probably not innocent :-) It could be good to highlight the ways that work best.

tim820

That's a nice visualization. It would probably be of most use to Zotero users with some experience, as a summary of things that they mostly know .... but also capabilities that they haven't come across. The "I never knew you could do that" phenomenon is not uncommon with Zotero, as it was with the earlier Microsoft Office apps (that was supposedly the reason why Microsoft changed to the ribbon interface - Word/Excel users in focus groups saying "I wish I could do 'this' " ... and Microsoft saying "you've always been able to do that ... it's just buried in a menu option dialog box").

Showing such a visualization to first time users might be a little overwhelming. ;)

For such novices, breaking the visualization into smaller components - starting with just the basics - might be helpful.

atrusriven

Thanks for the useful feedback! I split the diagram into its basic use cases and created simpler diagrams from it which could be integrated at the corresponding location in the documentation.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14645731/sqqz5btkdgmvkdqdllux.png

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14645731/xl9axmqft3mgxev7qznr.png

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14645731/q2uuv1ndgkocyxgn6m8e.png

Suggestion for the documentation text itself: Maybe we could make the linked documentation site a bit clearer what the different use cases are (from website, PDF, or manually added/identifier). The special use cases (e.g. standalone PDF for a longer time when not having proper metadata at hand) could be separated in special boxes and labelled as something like "Further possibilities".

atrusriven

I hope these adjustments suffice for improving the documentation. Any further points for discussion or further suggestions for improving. I was not sure which design fits the "corporate design" of Zotero best. Any ideas?

drhere

Great work! In Local, you can also able to import using .ris and .bib.

atrusriven

Thanks for the hint. This would be "Creating an item by importing" and relates to importing different file formats and from other reference managers. The corresponding pages in the documentation would be:
- https://www.zotero.org/support/moving_to_zotero
- https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/importing_standardized_formats

Analogously, I created a visualization for this use case which would be something like a meta approach (normally not so often; creating multiple items at once).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14645731/lw2kl55ke0mn9b0hp5d2.png

drhere

Thumb ups :)