[gentoo-nfp] Daniel Robbins Controversy Unfairly Reported in GMN -- Real Thread!

[Square Bottle]

First off, since so many email clients seem to have prioritized
headers over subject lines with the effect of making it seem to people
who use those clients that a thread was hijacked, I'm "moving the
discussion" over into a fresh, new email completely unattached to the
old thread. I realize it's a bit late, but being that I'm using gmail,
I only just realized what happened thanks to the posts by Mr. Alberts
and Mr. Freeman that illuminated why some of you though that hijacking
and top-posting had occurred. If using gmail or some other client for
which there was no issue, then don't worry about it. If you are using
one of the affected clients, then sorry about that, and hopefully
having a new thread will partially make amends!

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. I think I've pretty much said my
thoughts (and apparently too aggressively, so hopefully people can get
over that and consider what I'm trying to say), but I'd like to
respond to a few of the rebuttals. Mr. Alberts seemed to bring up all
the assertions other people made in response to my original posting,
so I'll respond to him (note that since I'm making a brand new email,
I'm hand-formatting the quotation, so I'm sorry if this messes up
anyone's client in ways that I can't foresee).

John Alberts wrote:
> There's really a few problems with your argument.
> 1. The "article" in question was not an article at all.  It was simply a
> collection of popular blog posts from the p.g.o. feed.
snip...

If that's what it was, then it shouldn't have been. I feel that the
point of the GMN is to inform the community about things that are
going on very much like a news outlet, and thus, the pieces should aim
to summarize and inform in an unbiased way. If editorials or any other
kind of piece that has a clearly dominant opinion (as is the case
here) are going to go in, then that's wonderful, but as with other
news publications, they should be be in their own section. See,
writers really need to be careful when make their pieces, or else folk
like me get their feathers all ruffled, heh. Perhaps I'm just a bit
more sensitive to this stuff having come from a media family and been
editor and writer for my school newspapers growing up or perhaps it's
just me, but I think it's a good thing to be concerned about.

So in other words, I for one would have preferred a piece that aimed
to describe the issue and quote people from both sides, since clearly
both sides have plenty of proponents. In this particular case, I also
think it would have been illuminating to reveal that in spite of the
fact that the general community currently seems to be heavily favoring
Daniel Robbins' proposal, the developers lean heavily against it. The
reason why I think this would have been good to include is because I
know that a lot of people out there are disconnected from the
developers, so since they just see the general community going in one
direction, must be frustrated and confused as to why it isn't simply
going forward. Posting links to the posts that oppose it will
similarly tell all the people that there are actually several
developers out there who disagree, so that's good, but it risks coming
off as one-sided and doesn't actually establish the fact that most
developers are opposed to it, and doesn't acknowledge that most of the
community is for it.

> 2. This discussion really belongs in an email to gmn-feedback, not on
> the gentoo-nfp list.  Although, you are talking about the foundation,
> it's really a complaint about how you feel the GMN presented the
> information.  So, it's best sent to gmn-feedback.
snip...

Hmm. Yeah, you're right in hindsight. But at least it lead to
something worth discussing, since apparently different people have
different ideas for what the objectives of GMN should be, with this
particular piece about the foundation issue being an excellent
example.

> 3. If you feel so strongly, you should really write a proper article
> yourself and submit it to gmn-feedback for inclusion in the next
> newsletter.  The GMN really needs more people to participate and submit
> articles.  I'm sure a properly written article on this topic would be
> well accepted.

Once upon a time, I considered helping Gentoo out by volunteering for
GWN and as a graphic designer, but... Well, I got scared, to be frank,
as I'd just left a different project and wasn't really ready to make
any new commitments. I think that in a month it will be too late
include an article about this since the issue will probably not be
relevant anymore, but maybe I'll write a few pieces for GMN about
other things in the future if they're interested. :)
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