Release notes

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

Hi Murray,

I'm horrible.  I meant to check with you a few months ago on this
topic, and then it got lost in my big TODO pile.  Really sad,
particularly because we've lost some good time to act on this.  :-(

We talked about the release notes at the last release team meeting (in
September?).  While I knew the release notes were important, I don't
think I ever realized just how important the release notes were until
seeing the contrast in the last two cycles; 2.18 and 2.20 didn't seem
very different to me quality-wise in any overall measurement other
than release-notes (where they were drastically different).  Yet 2.18
got us awful press and 2.20 was received totally differently.  So, I
think you did the most mportant job in 2.20, and you made it totally
shine.  Thanks a million.

The reason release notes came up was not just much better reactions we
got due to your hard work; we were also worried about too much work
being placed on your shoulders.  We were wondering what we might be
able to do to get a team of volunteers to help you out with this task,
and wanted to solicit your advice.

In addition to some potential names of people that we might contact to
ask if they'd be willing to help, there was one idea that was thrown
out:
  - Try to find volunteers that are willing to write up sneak-peek
    articles, much like Davyd's old articles.  Promote this and try to get
    multiple people writing such articles.

If this could be pulled off, it has a couple potential advantages:
  - This would provide material for the person who writes the final
    release notes, hopefully making their job easier.
  - This gives us a good idea of how thorough volunteers are and
    whether they understand the size of the task (we're guessing that
    most volunteers just don't understand how big the "release notes"
    task is and buckle under pressure after having already
    volunteered)
  - Having multiple sneak-peek articles would rock anyway
  - If someone fails to write up a sneak-peek article, we really don't
    lose too much, unlike what happens when release notes writers fall
    through.

But that may be a big if, and there may be better ways of encouraging
new contributors.  Thoughts?

Thanks for all your hard work,
Elijah