Re: Propositions for articles/ideas

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Le mardi 21 mars 2006 �1:26 -0300, Lucas Rocha a �it :
> Hi Vincent,
> 
> > I'd like to propose three ideas for GNOME Journal. Let me know if you
> > think they're interesting and if it's okay to have this in the next
> > issue.
> >
> >   + have an editorial-like column. However, this would be written by
> >     some people proposing an editorial. The idea is really to make it
> >     easy to submit some thoughts about GNOME. It's already possible to
> >     do this by submitting an article, however people don't think about
> >     it this way. I'd be interested to send some propositions for such
> >     a column ;-)
> 
> I didn't get the idea here... :-/ Examples?

Our usual articles are articles about facts (a software, a deployment, a
library, etc.). However, there's one article in the past that's a bit
different: "Marketing GNOME". This article is about the thoughts of John
about an issue. It's totally subjective. And this is why it was
great :-)

I believe we could have one article like this in every issue. They could
be proposed the same way as the other articles, but the fact is that
nearly nobody is proposing such articles. If we put a name for this
section, like "Thoughts for GNOME: Marketing GNOME" and a note about how
to submit an article for "Thoughts for GNOME", then it makes it quite
different. It's just a matter of naming a section and trying to get an
article for this section in every issue.

For example, I'm thinking of writing an article about our community.
I'll submit it, but I believe this would fit well in such a section.

> >   + create a "How I got there?" regular section. The idea here would be
> >     to let people explain how they got involved in GNOME, what they
> >     found hard/easy, what they love/hate, etc. There's already a good
> >     candidate for a first article (Joachim, who's been rocking on the
> >     docs) :-)
> >     This would be an interesting complement to the current "Behind the
> >     scenes" section, and it would help newcomers know how they can start
> >     contributing. Also, it will help the GNOME community understand some
> >     existing barriers.
> 
> This seems to overlap a litle the Behind the Scenes (BtS) series. This
> question ("How I got there") is part of the standard interview for BtS
> [1]. Your idea is to have more than one contributor answer per issue?
> BTW, Joachim Norenko is a nice indication for issue 9 on BtS. :-)

Well, in fact, this is not an interview but an article written by one
contributor. In BtS, the question is answered in a small number of
sentences (which is okay since it's an interview with lots of other
questions). Here, the idea is really to explain how one contributor got
involved, with lots of details. What worked. What didn't work so well.

I agree there's an kind of overlap with BtS, but, IMHO, this type of
articles would be helpful for people looking to get involve and who are
not sure how they can do it.

> >   + extend the feedback idea I read about somewhere. This would be a
> >     "Letter to the journal" section, where people could send some
> >     positive/negative feedback about GNOME in general (and not only
> >     GNOME Journal). We could then ask someone who knows about the
> >     commented stuff to write a small answer. Eg, someone writes to
> >     say that the file chooser could really be better (in an argumented
> >     way) and we ask Federico to write a small answer.
> >     We would need to announce this in an issue to get things started.
> 
> A forum topic [2] has been created for GJ at gnomesupport.org. Claus
> had the idea do add a "Discuss this article" link on articles. We
> could use the forum as a source for these feedbacks. Probably, we'd
> need to look for the best feedback entries before the release.
> Comments?

Good way to do it, indeed. Now it just needs some advertising :-)

Thanks for your 1/2 cents ;-)

Vincent

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