Re: push back on negative articles

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 12:01:20PM -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 07:54:44PM -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> > > seriously.  What the hell.
> >
> > It is just a troll. Probably to generate clicks or make the site name
> > known by hoping people link to it.
> >
> > Not sure what to do. I suggest someone should get media training.
> >
> >
> The problem here is that i don't want people to frame this debate on their
> terms like that.

Calling attention to the article would do exactly that.

There are a lot of sites out there whose only intention is to cause
controversy. This article seems exactly about that. How to deal with
this: no clue, but IMO it has to be a positive reaction.

> We can either complain to the magazine, or we start pushing back on the
> comments.  At the very least we should say something on comments.  Starting
> with this one.

If you start responding point-by-point, you give the control to the
person whose only intention is to spur controversy.

I'm not sure what the right approach is, but I think you should be
careful. It is quite easy to spin any response as e.g. 'GNOME doesn't
like to hear the truth'.

I do think something should be done about the level of inaccurate
reporting, but just doing something could really backfire.

I think it is best to give short generic statements. Maybe something
about Files. But don't directly respond to the inaccuracies, but say
something short that a) negates the crap indirectly b) is more about
what GNOME wants to achieve.

I'm not political enough to write such statements. But I think I can
predict beforehand what won't work. And that is trying to have a
discussion with sites which have no intention at all to have a
discussion.


Think Phoronix. Almost all GNOME articles are either inaccurate or
intentionally misleading. I think for sites which are intentionally
misleading but furthermore get quoted by other newssites, we best do
send out generic statements (but leave out specifics).

Anyway, how to deal with this is usually part of media training. I think
it is time someone gets trained on this. IMO Karen.
-- 
Regards,
Olav