Re: Spreading the press release/release announcement and collecting press coverage

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

I'm feeling some aggression and defensiveness here which I'm going to 
put down to cultural differences. I will say, though, that we all have a 
part to play in improving things, and I think that this could have been 
addressed better if I'd brought it up before the release (mea culpa).

Claus Schwarm a écrit :
> However, my point was that such a page was planned; for the first time
> in the history of GNOME release notes, AFAIK. In the old model of
> concentrating on "user visible" stuff, performance improvements would
> have gotten a paragraph, at best.

There was a performance section for 2.12 too.

> Btw, before you critize the user relevance you should have seen the
> raw material. Also read the discussion about user relevance in
> general, here on the list.

Sure - I also commented on the resulting text and suggested tying things 
to user actions. Which I can't find in the archives...

> There's a lot of stuff people talk about on pgo. What do you think?
> That release notes writers have nothing better to do than taking notes
> about stuff developers say somewhere on the Internet?

Well, it's my primary news source to know what application maintainers 
are working on, and what is creating a buzz in our community. So yes, I 
think it is important for people interested in promoting GNOME (and 
particularly release notes writers) be aware of it.

> There was a wiki page dedicated to list changes worth mentioning in the
> release notes. In my book, if it wasn't mentioned on the wiki page, it
> gets ignored -- especially if the job was agreed upon on bloody week
> before deadline! Compare to feature request not made in bugzilla.
>
> So? Did any of those guys you mentioned enter a description on the wiki
> page? Not that I know.

I don't know what vision you have of the marketing team, but mine does 
not consist of "if you build it, they will come". marketing is a 
pro-active task - we need to go to people inside GNOME to find out what 
they're working on, and go to people outside GNOME to tell them, and get 
feedback. Then we need to take that feedback, go back to people inside 
GNOME, and see what they think. Rinse, repeat.

So, do I think that module maintainers will swarm to a wiki page for 
2.18 just because I write a blog entry asking them to? Hell, no.

> (As a site note, I didn't get the memo about OpenOffice becoming a part
> of GNOME. A link would be welcome!  ;-)  )

mmeeks is a bonobo maintainer, and a lot of the OOo on Linux performance 
work is done directly in the GNOME platform (gtk+, pango, libbonobo, 
libgnome/ui).

> It would be helpful if changes are described so that people without a
> clue about the previous version would have a chance to understand it.
> Also, performance improvements should be measured on a user level to be
> more useful. Also, usability changes should be include an explanation
> about the reason of the change.

It's our job to get that raw techie information and translate/interpret 
it. Asking for it isn't going to make it happen. In fact, this job is 
the major task that the person who takes on the release notes/roadmap 
will have to handle.

Cheers,
Dave.