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Another vanishing reply from yesterday. |
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-------- Forwarded Message -------- |
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> From: Christel Dahlskjaer <christel@g.o> |
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> To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o |
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> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] July Council Meeting: Requested Agenda Item |
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> Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:44:02 +0100 |
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> |
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> On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 10:56 +0200, Patrick Lauer wrote: |
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> > On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 03:28 +0100, Christel Dahlskjaer wrote: |
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> > > I would like to ask that the Council discuss the current state and |
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> > > future of the GWN at their next meeting. |
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> > I don't think you have to escalate that far. We should be able to discuss things without the thermonuclear option ;-) |
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> |
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> I have no idea, I asked people, they suggested the Council. It may be |
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> the wrong place :) |
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> |
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> > > 1. Reliability. The GWN claims to be a weekly publication, yet it |
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> > > frequently fails to publish without prior warning. There was no edition |
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> > > this week, and Patrick Lauer says that it is "unknown" whether there |
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> > > will be an edition next week as Ulrich Plate is AWOL. |
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> > We have tried to get a backup structure working, Halcy0n for example |
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> > offered to help. Ulrich never responded to these offers. He usually has |
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> > a good reason for not doing the GWN (like no Internet access, broken notebook etc), but I also find this quite unsatisfactory. |
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> |
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> I am sure his reasons are good, and I agree there should be a backup |
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> structure in place. |
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> |
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> > > 2. Permissions. Although it could be considered flattering that the GWN |
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> > > should choose a developer's blog as inspiration for an article, they |
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> > > should ensure that they have the developer / author's permission before |
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> > > quoting them (see previous complaints by brix, ciaranm and others). |
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> > As far as I'm aware this has been taken care of. But with the GWN quite understaffed it is not easy to get everything done well. |
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> > I'd appreciate some more support from others, but sadly my recruiting |
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> > experiments usually ended after one contribution (for example summary of |
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> > the -user ML). |
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> |
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> Which is why I am hoping that by bringing it up elsewhere, someone may |
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> have some ideas of how to recruit people, or just attract people enough |
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> for them to make the occasional contribution. |
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> |
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> > > I also believe that when posting an article or interview, a copy should |
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> > > be sent to the relevant people to ensure that they are ok with what is |
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> > > being posted (my dev of the week interview, for example, was rather |
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> > > screwed up and misrepresentative). |
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> > My fault. |
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> |
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> Ok, thank you. |
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> |
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> > > When someone contacts GWN to have |
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> > > something corrected, it would be appreciated were the GWN staff to at |
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> > > least deign to acknowledge receipt, even if for some reason they choose |
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> > > not to honour the corrections or post a retraction (although refusing to |
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> > > publish corrections is extremely insulting to those wronged). |
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> > The reason for that is that the GWN is mostly sent out by mail. This |
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> > makes corrections a bit more difficult, but I think having a sane policy |
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> > for that would be helpful. |
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> > |
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> > > 3. Misinformation, misquotations and outright fabrications. Sure, |
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> > > there's freedom of the press, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse |
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> > > for deliberately making up quotes and printing intentional |
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> > > misinformation. |
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> > I don't know what exactly you are talking about here. But it shouldn't happen. |
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> > |
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> > > 4. Credit. Care should be taken to ensure that crrect credit is given. |
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> > Yes. |
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> > |
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> > > From a PR perspective, Gentoo could benefit greatly by better |
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> > > utilisation of the GWN. I believe that as it stands, however, the GWN is |
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> > > discouraging people from contributing and damaging Gentoo's credibility. |
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> > The problem with the GWN is the lack of reliable useful contributions. |
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> > There was a time when the GWN was ~80% written by me, but that took more |
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> > time than I could afford in the last weeks. |
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> |
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> See, if you spent less time arguing with that elitist bastard Chri... |
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> er, no :P Yes, I think what the GWN needs the most is more hands at the |
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> deck. |
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> |
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> > > Another thing that concerns me is the way the articles are written. It |
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> > > is blatanly obvious that the GWN writers are not native English speakers |
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> > > as both the grammar and the flow of the articles is far from attractive. |
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> > Help is appreciated :-) |
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> > The GWN has become a german thing, we have jokingly discussed writing it |
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> > in german and letting someone translate it to english. |
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> |
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> I don't think thats a bad bad idea, that is, maybe someone could atleast |
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> vamp it up a bit before it goes live. |
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> |
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> > > Having read through the archives, I notice that there was once a time |
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> > > when the GWN was a great publication, and I would like to think that it |
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> > > could become great yet again; in its current state, though, it is doing |
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> > > more harm than good. |
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> > Agreed. |
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> > |
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> > > Lack of content and poorly written or incorrect articles are often |
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> > > justified by the GWN team on grounds of overwork and insufficient |
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> > > manpower. When I asked why they were not recruiting, I was informed that |
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> > > no-one has any interest in contributing. |
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> > There's a big difference between one-off articles and continuous |
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> > contribution. Also those that I found most willing to contribute had the |
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> > biggest language problems - what we need is support from the native |
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> > speakers. |
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> |
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> Nod. I presume for some contributing weekly is rather difficult (finding |
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> something to write about, finding the time to draft, re-draft, clean, |
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> tidy, send off for feedback, double check, stand on their head etc etc) |
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> however I guess it would be possible to rotate if there was enough |
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> 'freelance editors' on the uh, payroll. |
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> |
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> > > Upon speaking with others, |
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> > > however, I find that this is not the case -- people are interested, but |
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> > > fear (and rightly so) that their work will be edited in such a way that |
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> > > it is no longer something with which they want to be associated. |
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> > > |
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> > > Another complaint is that the GWN rejects any writing style which has |
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> > > any degree of character or levity. Any attempt at dececnt writing (the |
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> > > kind that would make it into publication in English newspapers or |
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> > > magazines, for example), is met with the claim that "the GWN is not a |
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> > > humorous publication". |
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> > Blame the flamefests of the past. Whenever attempts were made to give |
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> > the GWN more dynamic it was flamed down (because ze german humor is not |
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> > funny! Nein! ;-) ) |
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> > So the consensus was to keep the silly jokes out of the GWN since always |
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> > someone misunderstands or complains. I'd like to have it a bit more |
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> > open, funny, enjoyable ... but there's only so much I can do. |
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> |
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> So, what brought on the "This is not a humorous publication" attitude |
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> was infact outsiders rather than the GWN team, as in, it was reactional |
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> rather than a case of you guys just deciding fun was bad? |
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> |
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> > > I would like to see discussion about the way the GWN is |
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> > > (mis)representing Gentoo, how we can better actualise its full potential |
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> > > and what can be done to address the concerns listed above. |
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> > Sounds good. I hope at some point Ulrich responds. |
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> |
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> I hope so too, I also hope that anyone who may have some ideas will |
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> speak up rather than everyone just telling me how horrible I am for |
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> bringing these issues up! :) |
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> |
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> > Thanks for bringing this up, |
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> |
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> Thank you for pointing some of them out. |
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> |