Re: Communicating to users what GNOME 3.0 is

[Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org>]

On 01/15/2010 06:50 AM, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote:
> El vie, 15-01-2010 a las 13:44 +0100, Andre Klapper escribió:
>>
>> As with every change, there's a lot of confusion and sometimes wrong
>> press about it (after reading some comments on articles in online tech
>> magazines on GNOME 3).
>> Beside wrong stuff like "They will remove nautilus and force us to use
>> zeitgeist/journal" and the classic "Please don't repeat KDE 4.0" I've
>> also seen a lot of "We cannot use gnome-panel and metacity anymore,
>> and
>> gnome-shell needs powerful hardware that I don't have" comments.
>>
>> It cannot hurt at all to clarify things here by communicating better
>> and
>> more often what GNOME 3 means and especially what it won't force users
>> to do to reduce FUD.
>>
> 
> What do you say if we go -sometime in the campaign- with a meme-like
> thing in the fashion of debunking myths. Really short posts or tweets
> about this common misinterpretations.
> For example: #gnome3 MYTH: you're forced to use gnome-shell; FACT: you
> can run gnome-panel+metacity if you prefer

This is an awesome idea!

> 
> That would already help I think. They key being short and concise,
> because we can go on and elaborate on the future of stuff, but people
> care about (meaning: will only read) the yes/no to their question.
> 
> I guess we could even have a funky critter to associate, but that might
> be bikeshedding :P.
> 

I took the intitiative and created a GNOME 3.0 Myths page on
live.gnome.org[1] linked from the Marketing wiki.  I've added a couple
questions and answers, with questions / myths in italics and the answers
in bold.  I think we'll need everyone's help in the GNOME community to
keep this page up to date over 2010.  Links to mailing lists or blogs to
for citation in the answers would also be helpful.

As we continue to add to it, I'd love to see people blog about it -
especially if you add a new myth debunked - blog it and link to the wiki
page.

Please review my start just to make sure I'm not wrong in my answers
too.  :)

Thanks!

Paul

[1] http://live.gnome.org/GNOME3Myths