Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: news item for upower

[Alan McKinnon]

On 04/06/2014 00:32, Tom Wijsman wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Jun 2014 22:24:11 +0200
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>> The point is, human communication is vastly more powerful
>
> +1
>
> It might not be clear in the moment, because it looks like a ton of
> bikeshedding and other ways some individuals would label this; but it
> will be useful some time from now, when it leads to useful results.
>
> Having some people talk about things on a chat, forum, blog, ... might
> have a short lived effect now with an occasional spike in the future;
> but, a news item reaches a much wider public for a much longer item.
>
> Let's say someone upgrades his system in some weeks / months from now,
> that person will be thankful that a news item was written about this;
> instead of having this be part of the already though job of updating.
>
> Of course, there is a thing like "too much handholding" but I think
> that's not the case here as the upower case pops up in a lot of places;
> one does not have to forget that there is also "too little handholding".
>
> If it weren't for genkernel or a kernel seed to help me start out with
> a booting system, I perhaps might have never started using Gentoo; I've
> afterwards managed to change my config over time to look nowhere near
> the original, but at least it makes me happy to have experienced the
> handholding to bring me where I am today. These "little things" matter.
>


Indeed. It really comes down to a judgement call whether to compose a
news item or not.

I myself in my sysadmin day job get this right about 50% of the time if
I'm lucky. I've learned (via hard knocks) that if a number of people
raise concerns, then it very well might not be bikeshedding, it might be
valid. Often as the BOFH I'm too close to the technical problem to
notice the human elements - that needs a view from 10 feet back.

News items are probably one of Gentoo's best ideas ever.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com