Developing GNOME News

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi all,

My action item from last week's meeting was to mail the list about
options for our news sites. So here we go!

The question is how we should develop GNOME's news sites and what role
GNOME Journal should have. A number of goals were brought up in our
discussion last week, including:

 * Doing a better job of getting the news out
 * Enabling people to contribute to GNOME marketing more easily
 * Reducing fragmentation of our news sources

I'm personally keen to address these issues and could use some of my
time working on them. It seems like there are a few possible
approaches:

*** Turn GNOME Journal into a blog ***

I spoke to the previous journal editors about publishing more
regularly and they weren't too keen. The future for GNOME Journal
seems uncertain right now, since it lacks contributors.

*** Make gnome.org the primary site for GNOME news ***

We already have a news feed on the site and this could be expanded to
include a greater variety of content. I think the question here is
whether we want to expand the role of gnome.org away from 'official'
announcements and news. My sense is that we don't, but I would be
interested to hear other peoples' views on this.

*** Use news.gnome.org ***

This only carries syndicated content right now. We could turn it into
a site that pushes stories from elsewhere and has its own original
content, however (like LWN does). This approach appeals to me because
it would mean that we would have a single place for both kinds of
content. GNOME News could also pull in content from GNOME Journal and
gnome.org, creating a single place for news.

*** Wogue ***

It's great to see a new volunteer-run effort, and I certainly wouldn't
want to compete with it. We could leave Wogue to take care of the news
problem for us, but I suspect that it is targeting a slightly
different audience from the one that we are interested in, and that
there is space for us to have our own site too. We should certainly
work to ensure that our efforts don't overlap with Wogue's as it
develops.

So, which of these options do people prefer? I'd really like to hear
your views on this!

Allan
--
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