Re: Requesting Approval of Release notes general structure

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 14:45 +0100, Claus Schwarm wrote:
> Hi, Murray!
>
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:51:54 +0100
> Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
>
> > I would like to keep the user/admin/developer distinction that we
> > added for 2.12 and 2.14:
> > http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/notes/en/
> >
> > but lost for 2.16:
> > http://www.gnome.org/start/2.16/notes/en/
> > In fact, I think we just lost the admin and developer stuff.
> >
> > Was this a conscious decision at the time?
>
> It wasn't discussed on the ml. I just thought it makes sense and nobody
> objected.
>
> The distinction according to the role of the reader has no value:
> We often need users to read the stuff for developers or admins.
>
> For example, think the new development suite: It's clearly news for
> developers, only. But we should want as many users as possible to read
> and know about it. Why? Because that increases their trust in GNOME as
> an application platform. The number of available applications (and the
> total number of users) is the only objective reason to start using a
> GNOME desktop.

That's not the focus I'd choose personally. I want to focus on the
people who will never ever care about development, while also making
that information available to those who do. I want to avoid people
saying "What is this incomprehensible stuff they are blabbering about?
Linux is for geeks. Goodbye."

But I'm trying to stay away, to let fresh ideas in, so, erm, sorry.

> Thus, it's too important to put it into some developer section that
> many people wouldn't read.
>
> The core problem is self-description: For example, many users at home
> administrate the familiy PC but they wouldn't think of themselves as
> "Admins". Thus, they probably ignored the Admin section of the 2.14
> release notes and missed useful information about the Lockdown editor.
>
> So I ignored the "user/admin" distinction and moved the developer stuff
> under the headline "Code cleanups and backend improvements" which
> doesn't sound so scary:
>
>  http://www.gnome.org/start/2.16/notes/en/rnbackend.html
>
> In hindsight, "Security and backend improvements." might have
> been even better. Well...

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com