Re: push back on negative articles

[Larry Cafiero <larry cafiero gmail com>]

Observations from a former participant who is now an outside observer:

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl> wrote:
> 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.

Actually, Olav, it's not. Datamation has a pretty wide readership, and
agree with him or not, Bruce Byfield is a fairly well-informed
commentator and not a troll, as you imply. His commentary is not
reporting in a traditional news sense, but more of his opinion, and
agree with him or not (and he and I have had some knock-down, drag-out
discussions when we disagree), he does his homework.

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

Again, I disagree. I would be willing to bet that Bruce has better
things to do with his life than stir up 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'.

Arguably, there are many things in this article that GNOME folks
should ask themselves, assuming that Byfield is right in at least some
points in his commentary; to say nothing of working under the
assumption that nothing -- not even GNOME -- is perfect. One
observation right off the bat: I can't use GNOME 3 due to hardware
limitations, and personally I feel that having to use the "fallback
mode" is the digital equivalent of being forced to sit at the back of
the bus (an analogy that's probably only understood by Americans, but
for the rest of you it goes back to racial inequality in the US up to
the 1960s when non-whites had to sit in the back of the bus). I don't
think I'm the only one who feels that way.

> 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.

Again, I don't think you're too familiar with Datamation -- if you
were, you'd probably know they're not like that. However, if you or
someone else wants to point out the errors/inaccuracies in the
article, again I say the comments section would be the place for it.

> 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).

I'm no fan of Phoronix -- who cares if one desktop is 0.00003ms faster
than another? -- but nevertheless they are thorough. Datamation, too,
is thorough to a large extent. So when you have those two coming out
swinging with problems and/or shortcomings with GNOME 3 or the
community, you might want to approach the problem first by looking in
a mirror before externalizing it with reaction. Arguably the solution
may be beyond the scope of the marketing group, but going at
addressing it in public responsibly -- responsibly and truthfully --
is a fairly important step.

Just an observation on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Larry Cafiero