Search the Community

Hello ! So they let me out of my cell today, which means I have a lot of pent-up nitpicking energy stored, haha ​At the bottom of this post, there's a respectful critique of how Air handles the explaining of this service to newcomers and my proposed solution. My main arguments for improving the Air service are: - This post about new-people seemingly not feeling welcome. - And this post about Community Mods & more interaction from Air. As the subtext to this forum reads: "Have some feedback and input to share? Don't be shy and drop us a note. We want to hear from you and strive to make our service better and more user friendly for our guests and members alike." So as they say, Challenge Accepted, Good Sir. Time to unleash my inner OCD pokemon! - Introduction & explaining the madness I'd like to post a series of things which I think need some changes; such as the spelling & grammar of various posts. I understand if English isn't the native language of various Staff members and that's fine; that's why I'd like to lend a helping hand. I don't know if it would be wiser to post all this in a support ticket, because it can amount to a lot of content and perhaps by making it public, more people can contribute and then we can keep it nicely organised in one place. I realise it can sound very condescending, patronizing and/or rude to suggest changes in spelling & grammar, so to be clear, it's just because I currently have an urge to help out; I have the utmost respect for AirVPN Staff & those which contribute positively to the community :]. Why does it matter how things are spelled and such? Because appearances, user-friendliness & attention to detail matter, both in terms of technical subjects and non-technical subjects. When I first started, I thought some of the how-tos could use some slight changes, because it was sometimes massively confusing to juggle the technical explanations with the sometimes unclear or vague wording that accompanied them. I like to think that it's AirVPNs attention to security & privacy details which make it so great; so why should the presentational details of the site be any different? :]. I hope it'll be satisfactory & easy for the Air Staff to just copy/paste the corrected texts in, if they decide to make use of them. I'll of course not change the spirit/content of anything. If you have any input, please feel free to make a post. These are just corrections based on what I think sounds right; we're all different :]. I'd like it if the Staff could clarify something in the "About Us" section. Blue text = My changes/corrections. (Sometimes the original isn't wrong, but could just be clearer, hence changes). Red text = The item should be deleted. (In my humble opinion, thank you) Main AirVPN Pages This should cover the entire AirVPN site, except individual posts in the FAQ and the much-dread ToS - Mission Page Corrections - Technical Specs Page Corrections - About Us Page Corrections I'm not sure what was trying to be expressed at the bottom of the article regarding "harsh contrasts against a project of sharing data, etc. etc." Can someone elaborate? Was there some sort of cross-VPN provider cooperation, wherein user data was or was going to be shared? Or was it meant to say that AirVPN was the opposite of all the other providers? Also, I suggest removing the very last bit "(we'll have some news on that probably within the first half of 2013)." since that's quite old and perhaps shouldn't be on an "About Us" page . - Plans Page Corrections "Accepted" sounds much more natural to me than "Allowed" Payment Processors. Oh and the period at the end of Free Trial access should go away too, in order to conform with the other headings. Also, on the Enter page, it's not called OS X anymore, as Apple renamed it MacOS. - Ping Matrix Page Corrections I'm not sure I understand this one correctly. Please say so, if that's the case. - Top Users Page Corrections - Config Generator "More Help" Page Corrections I'm not sure what's meant by "unique download" here. Unique zip archives for each file maybe? - Websites Support Page Corrections - Databases Page Corrections - Client Software Platforms / Environment Pages Corrections - Privacy Notice and Terms Page Corrections I assume it really was "extra-EU" and not "extra-UE". If not, what's UE? I hope it's okay I skip the ToS Explanatory Posts Here's where I would like to say something. A slight critique. I'm really glad that Air Staff have taken the time to put up such nice FAQs.I'm likewise also really glad that they're extremely knowledgeable and can explain things in a technical way.However... As I also said in my new users guide, the main problem with Air is that it's too technical, when it's not needed. This is GREAT for IT-people, but not everyone else.I mean, it's fine to be technical. But I would like to see it either be "toned down" a little in some places, such as the FAQs, where it's very likely that new people will go or:Alternatively, one could provide non-technical explanations alongside the technical ones. Perhaps in spoilers? I LOVE spoilers lol.Case in point, in the FAQ titled "What is a VPN?". The explanations are great and for technical people, it's borderline pornography. But really, if someone doesn't know what a VPN even is, what are the odds of them understanding what things like this mean: I genuinely think that most new users, especially those who don't have an interest in IT, will have a seizure. An FAQ is, I think, meant to leave people with less questions, not more of them. After reading that, I'm sure many would be asking things like: What's a default gateway push? Is it dangerous?What's encapsulation?What's UDP & TCP?Which stream? Twitch.com?HTTP? Socks? Proxy???I of course don't want to sacrifice form or function for the sake of making things ultra-easy for everyone. We can hang a sign on the door saying "Brain Required" if you wish. But it has to be said that attention to things like this, helps us all in one way or another. Air draws in more customers, which means one of the best VPNs gets to keep running. More people see what a quality VPN service is like & perhaps more services like Air will appear. Likewise, more people protected on the internet is a good thing in general. Plus, all the hardwork & passion Air Staff put into this excellent service, won't mean a thing if no one knows how to use it; that's just a fact really. Our aim, in my view, should be to make the service as welcoming as possible, without sacrificing the aforementioned form or function; which is also one of the biggest problems with modern encryption & thus a barrier to mass-adoption. After all, then there'd be no excuse for people to not use AirVPN and we can finally call them on their bluff eh - Original Text - Attempted Example Of Simplified Text What do you think? Sure, it's missing some details and maybe it's not all that accurate, but if it gets the main point across, so what? As I said, we could just make spoilers for both versions. If Air wants, I'll gladly help make more of such explanations for the other things, since I'm quite good at doing so; mainly because I hardly understand it myself lmao, but shhh Thank you for reading and as always, Thank you to AirVPN & Staff for providing this excellent service, as well as the AirVPN community for keeping this place going strong ! I want to know one thing: has Air got any plans on translating the service into different languages? I think it would be so great if they crowd-sourced this. Anyhow, if you spot anything I missed or disagree with a correction, feel free to tell me! Thanks. Now if you'll excuse me, my bed misses me, lol.