Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Communication]]

[John Fleck <jfleck inkstain net>]

On Mon, 2002-09-02 at 14:53, Eric Baudais wrote:
> > 
> > Pat-
> > 
> > I have likewise been disturbed by your response to my analysis of the
> > problems I see within the sun doc team and proposals to remedy the
> > problems.  I do not wish this to degrade into a flame war, but I feel
> > strongly the sun doc team can improve their communication with the gnome
> > community.  Since you do not feel the need to talk about this publicly I
> > have responded to your insightful email privately.
> > 
> > On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 15:12, Pat Costello wrote:
> > > Eric,
> > > 
> > > See my responses to your mail. Our whole team is very disturbed by your 
> > > assertions and allegations. I can only conclude that you have 
> > > misinterpreted our best intentions. Your mail seems like an unwarranted 
> > > attack.   If you feel that you have valid points about the Sun 
> > > documentation team contribution to GNOME, and want to take this 
> > > discussion further, then I suggest that you include other active members 
> > > of the community such as John Fleck, Sasha Kirillov, Dan Mueth, Jeff 
> > > Waugh. As always, we are happy to discuss our role and contribution with 
> > > the community.

Let me suggest that, to the extent there is a communication problem
here, more than a bit of the fault is my own. One of my roles was
supposed to be as a liason between the GDP and the Sun Docs team, and I
have clearly let both sides down here. Sorry.

Both Pat and Eric have said things with which I agree.

The Sun team's style of communication and that of the GDP are quite
different. The GDP's traditional mode of communication invokes the
mailing lists and IRC, both very public settings. My experience with you
Sun team members has been that you tend to prefer private emails. I have
tried to traverse this terrain carefully, respecting your style of
communication by responding in private, asking permission if I felt it
was necessary to elevate something to a discussion on the public list. I
would frankly have preferred if y'all had jumped into the public fray
more, on IRC and gnome-doc-list, but I have tried to respect your style
of communication and work with it. In this regard, I think Eric's point
is well taken - you have not been especially active in this part of our
community life, where much of the planning of our big-picture ideas and
goals goes on.

That said, however, in those private emails, in the blow-by-blow of
working out who's doing what doc, and what their status is, I think the
Sun team has been effective in communicating directly with the
individuals involved. I can't speak for others here, but that certainly
has been the case for gnome-utils, the users guide and the other bits of
miscellany that we've been dealing with. The failing here was mine in
not finding ways to elevate things to the public fora so others would
know what was going on.

I think Eric's contention that the Sun team has run roughshod over
individual documenters is unfair. It's tricky terrain to negotiate, but
I know of no case where the Sun docs team insisted on having us use
their doc over the objection of a doc's original author/maintainer. In
this regard, my experience strongly supports Pat's contention that the
Sun team has tried hard to do the right thing. (I can't speak to the
gedit situation.)

So how do we ensure that we communicate better, so we give users what
they deserve, which is the best-documented desktop there is?

Cheers,
John

-- 
John Fleck
jfleck inkstain net (h) jfleck abqjournal com (w)
http://www.inkstain.net http://www.abqjournal.com

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