Re: [Engagement] Relaying out bug fixes news via social media

[Alexandre Franke <afranke gnome org>]

On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 6:46 PM, Umang Jain <mailumangjain gmail com> wrote:
> Hi there,

Hello,

I apologize in advance for sounding like a buzzkill, but I do not
share the enthusiasm about this. I do agree with the general idea,
just not the proposed form.

> We have come up with an idea in the area of social media outreach and
> it would be glad if you can share your views on it. The idea is to
> relay news out in the social media whenever any bug/issue is fixed via
> dedicated GNOME Bugs' Social Media Channels (thereafter referred as
> SMC).

With some curation? Because otherwise I really don’t see any value in
this and people that want to see everything should just subscribe to
commits-list.

> GNOME Bugs' SMC are not created yet and will be separate from main
> GNOME handles. You can take a look at LibreOffice's bug channel [1].
> [1] https://twitter.com/LibreOfficeBugs

That LO channel is noisy. I would take it as an example of what not to aim for.

> Although, based on the severity of the bug/issue, the main GNOME
> handle can retweet/relay the link on it's own account. The idea is to
> keep a separate bug SMC is:
>
> * Not to make main GNOME handle very noisy
> * To have automated GNOME bugs SMC

Please don’t make it automatic. That’s a sure way to make it noisy and
uninteresting.

> I think that most of us agree that social media is the fastest way to
> get information out.

Can we also agree that social media are flooded with content and that
people waste a lot of time on them skimming through it to find

> Therefore, as far as code development is
> concerned, it takes a while till the information is actually relayed
> out. Mostly, until someone blogs about it and then pick up by other
> blogs and so on..

You need to find balance between the current lack of communication and
the overwhelming flood of an automated feed.

> We can get fast here and be more verbose about the work that goes into
> everyday. In addition to that, we want it to be automated; similar to
> [1]

Again, this is a bad idea.

We did have something that was called the [commit
digest](https://blogs.gnome.org/commitdigest/), a weekly blog post
highlighting the most interesting code changes, and it was good.
That’s what you should aim at. Twitter or blog posts doesn’t really
matter, but the curation aspect is key to make it good. Unfortunately,
Frédéric Peters was the only one putting in the time that requires and
after quite a while he moved to other things.

> Now comes the most interesting part. It would be really great if we
> can mention "Newcomers" and their internet handle in the bug SMC link;
> That should really make them feel special as they can show to the
> world that they have done something great and brag!

Sure, that is a good idea.

-- 
Alexandre Franke
GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director