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

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi Dave,

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
> 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?

Personally, I don't think it should be the role of gnome.org to be a
generic news service. It should be more 'official' than that. That
isn't to say that we could not establish such a service elsewhere, of
course (this was discussed on the marketing list not long ago [1]).

> 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?

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.

I'd be interested to hear why people don't feel they want to be
Foundation members. I think it would be beneficial for the project if
there is a closer relationship between being a contributor and being a
Foundation member.

>> 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?

Yes, again, check the marketing list archive.

Allan

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2011-October/msg00064.html
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