Re: Proposal - merge the Foundation blog into gnome.org

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

On 11/30/2011 10:32 AM, Allan Day wrote:
> For a long time we have had a news feed for gnome.org and a separate
> Foundation blog. I'm proposing that we combine them both into the
> gnome.org feed.

I definitely think that moving to a unique GNOME News feed & news page 
is a great idea.

I wonder: how will this structure allow the evolution of handling news 
for GNOME? Is there a way to submit a story or contact the editors? How 
does one become an editor?

And, just to be clear, when you talk about the gnome.org news feed, 
you're talking about http://gnome.org/news (the wordpress blog) and not 
http://news.gnome.org (the Planet aggregator), yes?

> A bit of background. First, I think we should be moving in a direction
> where the Foundation isn't considered to be a separate entity from the
> GNOME project. The Foundation is a vital part of our project, there
> shouldn't be much of a difference between 'The GNOME Project' and 'The
> GNOME Foundation' in terms of membership and identity.

I'm sure there are a few people who would contest this - who are 
consciously not foundation members for some reason, while being GNOME 
hackers - and there is also the technical difficulty of where you draw 
the line for membership rights like having a vote in elections, but I 
think by and large, defining the membership of the GNOME Foundation as 
"people involved in the GNOME project" is fine.

> The gnome.org news feed and the Foundation blog are almost identical
> in scope. The gnome.org feed provides 'official', generally
> non-technical, news about what is happening in the GNOME project. The
> Foundation blog is exactly the same, except that it is restricted to
> the Foundation. There is a large class of subjects that I would like
> to see on both streams, including board elections, fund raising
> campaigns, new members, release announcements and initiatives such as
> the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. Both the gnome.org news stream
> and the Foundation blog would benefit from having a higher frequency
> of posts.


> It might be hard to lose the Foundation blog, but I think we'd be
> stronger if we united our feeds.
>
> Thoughts? Opinions?

I don't think the Foundation blog is being read by anything except the 
GNOME announcement aggregator right now, to be honest.

Occasionally people would point to foundation announcements in other 
blogs, so it's important to ensure old links keep working or redirect, 
but I'm all in favour of simplifying and consolidating foundation news 
sources, on condition that the result is interesting for people to read.

I'd also be happy to see notes pointing to significant news stories 
about GNOME written on other sources going into this news feed, by the 
way (as I think I've said before).


Presumably "what to do about the Journal?" and "what to do about 
news.gnome.org?" are separate discussions?

Cheers,
Dave.


--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com