Re: push back on negative articles

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 03:02:17PM -0700, Larry Cafiero wrote:
> 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.

I didn't imply he was a troll. I've already stated he is a troll.

> > 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.

Could you expand on this?

> > 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 find this comparison over the top offence.

I urge you to read https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct

> > 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.

You keep pointing out that I should be familiar. I just base my
observations on the contents article. Reputation of some site is nice,
but you're not really going into any detail.

> > 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.

I said that inaccurate or intentionally misleading. Or in plain word:
the site lies.

Your response is: 'look into the mirror'.

I don't see how these thing relate.

> Just an observation on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
-- 
Regards,
Olav