Re: Spreading the press release/release announcement and collecting press coverage

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi, Dave!

On Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:19:36 +0200
Dave Neary <dneary free fr> wrote:

> The problem with that page is:
>   1. technical focus, rather than user focus ("here are operations
> which are faster", rather than "Here are high-level usecases which
> are faster")
>   2. The language is pretty tame. We have a headline that says 
> "performance tweaks" - a tweak to me is turning a screw in your
> motor, it's not dramatically improving anything
>   3. It's not in the final release notes at all, not even as a
> footnote
> 

I agree with some of your points.

However, my point was that such a page was planned; for the first time
in the history of GNOME release notes, AFAIK. In the old model of
concentrating on "user visible" stuff, performance improvements would
have gotten a paragraph, at best.

Now, it's a permanent part -- at least, if there's enought to write
about. And documenting the efforts on a regular schedule is probably
more effective in the long run, anyway.

Btw, before you critize the user relevance you should have seen the
raw material. Also read the discussion about user relevance in
general, here on the list.

[snip]

> 
> My point is, this was being talked about on pgo for months, people
> like Jono Bacon were raving about our performance work, and a little
> more effort could have gone into explaining that in a way that made
> real the benefits of the increased performance (and even more, the
> effort put into it).
> 

There's a lot of stuff people talk about on pgo. What do you think?
That release notes writers have nothing better to do than taking notes
about stuff developers say somewhere on the Internet?

There was a wiki page dedicated to list changes worth mentioning in the
release notes. In my book, if it wasn't mentioned on the wiki page, it
gets ignored -- especially if the job was agreed upon on bloody week
before deadline! Compare to feature request not made in bugzilla.

So? Did any of those guys you mentioned enter a description on the wiki
page? Not that I know.

(As a site note, I didn't get the memo about OpenOffice becoming a part
of GNOME. A link would be welcome!  ;-)  )

However. If you don't want this to happen again, take care about posting
a entry in your blog when the next alphas/betas are published. Maybe,
more maintainers will then enter a description of changes in the wiki.
The page is here:

 http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointSeventeen/ReleaseNotes

It would be helpful if changes are described so that people without a
clue about the previous version would have a chance to understand it.
Also, performance improvements should be measured on a user level to be
more useful. Also, usability changes should be include an explanation
about the reason of the change.


Cheers,
Claus