Re: [gentoo-dev] July Council Meeting: Requested Agenda Item

[Wernfried Haas]

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 04:28:36AM +0100, Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:
> I would like to ask that the Council discuss the current state and
> future of the GWN at their next meeting.

Council? Why escalate things? Have you talked to Ulrich about the
problems mentioned below? Isn't the GWN somehow a userrel issue? ;-)

> 1. Reliability. The GWN claims to be a weekly publication, yet it
> frequently fails to publish without prior warning. There was no edition
> this week, and Patrick Lauer says that it is "unknown" whether there
> will be an edition next week as Ulrich Plate is AWOL.

I agree there are problems due to Ulrich being awol every now and
then, but what can the council do about it? Fire him so the GWN is
unmaintained? ;-)

> 2. Permissions. Although it could be considered flattering that the GWN
> should choose a developer's blog as inspiration for an article, they
> should ensure that they have the developer / author's permission before
> quoting them (see previous complaints by brix, ciaranm and others).

Why? What makes blog posts different to mailing list/forum threads,
new versions being released etc? Do you want to ask people for
permission then, too?

> I also believe that when posting an article or interview, a copy should
> be sent to the relevant people to ensure that they are ok with what is
> being posted (my dev of the week interview, for example, was rather
> screwed up and misrepresentative). When someone contacts GWN to have
> something corrected, it would be appreciated were the GWN staff to at
> least deign to acknowledge receipt, even if for some reason they choose
> not to honour the corrections or post a retraction (although refusing to
> publish corrections is extremely insulting to those wronged).

Considering Ulrich is appearently still/again awol, could that be the
reason? I have requested small fixes (like wrong email addresses in
stuff i submitted) every now and than and got what i asked for.

> 3. Misinformation, misquotations and outright fabrications. Sure,
> there's freedom of the press, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse
> for deliberately making up quotes and printing intentional
> misinformation.

Huh? Can you back that statement up?

> From a PR perspective, Gentoo could benefit greatly by better
> utilisation of the GWN. I believe that as it stands, however, the GWN is
> discouraging people from contributing and damaging Gentoo's credibility.

I have submitted a bunch of articles to the GWN, and it has always
worked fine for me. Yes, Ulrich is awol at times and sometimes there
are smaller corrections to make in the final article, but i never felt
discouraged to submit my stuff. Worst case it takes a few extra days
to get published.

> Another thing that concerns me is the way the articles are written. It
> is blatanly obvious that the GWN writers are not native English speakers
> as both the grammar and the flow of the articles is far from attractive.
> Having read through the archives, I notice that there was once a time
> when the GWN was a great publication, and I would like to think that it
> could become great yet again; in its current state, though, it is doing
> more harm than good.

I disagree. GWN could use some more manpower to improve this and that,
but i don't see the harm - at least i could easily come up with lots
of stuff happening that does more harm (Not pointing my finger at
anyone and leaving it up to everyone's imagination to think of
something that does damage Gentoo in a terrible way).

> Lack of content and poorly written or incorrect articles are often
> justified by the GWN team on grounds of overwork and insufficient
> manpower. When I asked why they were not recruiting, I was informed that
> no-one has any interest in contributing. Upon speaking with others,
> however, I find that this is not the case -- people are interested, but
> fear (and rightly so) that their work will be edited in such a way that
> it is no longer something with which they want to be associated.

I'm sure a solution can be found to that problem - actually Ulrich is
quite a nice guy to talk to, so if those people came out of hiding
those problems may be solved by talking.

> Another complaint is that the GWN rejects any writing style which has
> any degree of character or levity. Any attempt at dececnt writing (the
> kind that would make it into publication in English newspapers or
> magazines, for example), is met with the claim that "the GWN is not a
> humorous publication".

http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20060522-newsletter.xml#doc_chap3
Look at the picture and tell me it's not at least a tiny bit
humorous. Agreed, the joke is a bit obvious.

> I would like to see discussion about the way the GWN is
> (mis)representing Gentoo, how we can better actualise its full potential
> and what can be done to address the concerns listed above.

I'm still not sure why the council should discuss the issue in the
first place, i think everyone agrees that the GWN is a bit
understaffed (for whatever reason) and some stuff doesn't work too
well. So i assume helping out with the GWN and helping those who fear
it for some reason may be the best way to solve these problems.

cheers,
	Wernfried

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne at gentoo dot org
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