Q 2 all candidates: Usage of debian-announce@lists.d.o and..

Martin Zobel-Helas · External Since: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 192

Hi,

[ Please don't CC me, i am reading d-vote actively ]

According to lists.debian.org, two of our current mailinglists have the
following use:

debian-news DeleteThis @lists.debian.org:
| Debian News, weekly and otherwise
| General news about the distribution and the project.
|
| The current events and news about Debian are summarized in the Debian
| Weekly News, a newsletter regularly posted on this list.
|
| All posts to this list are moderated.

debian-announce DeleteThis @lists.debian.org:
| Important announcements
| Major news and very important changes in the project are announced here.
|
| All posts to this list are moderated.

Both mailing lists are currently moderated by only one person, Martin
'Joey' Schulze, who is the only one allowed to be posting there.

In the past, there have been several attempts e.g. by the release team
to send postings to one of those lists directly. In all cases this has
been rejected by Joey, in one case he altered the text in a way the
release team was not quite happy about the outcome.

The release team was not the only group who tried to send posts there; i
remember very well that a posting to d-news about Debian participation
in Googles Summer of Code 2006 was send out on May 8th 16:30 Central
European Summer Time), while Students were able to apply 'til May 8th
(17:00 Pacific Daylight Time). From what i know, is, that the draft for
this post sent to the press team much earlier.

IMHO things like this could have been avoided by having a proper team
behind press DeleteThis @d.o and those both mailing lists which is at least 4
persons.

How do you plan help the press team out here? Do you think a delegation
of one person is enough for the press team this far?

And to AJ:
In your mail "ajt's anti-rebuttal"[1] you have a whole paragraph about
"Bigger teams" and a whole paragraph about "Debian publicity". Do you
think you performed well in those both categories as DPL? What would you
do to "encourage the press to talk to other people in the project than
just the DPL" next year?

Greetings
Martin

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/03/msg00262.html

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Raphael Hertzog · External Since: May 28, 2005 Posts: 461

On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> How do you plan help the press team out here?

By encouraging people to help. The two issues that you mentioned have been
problematic because of timing issues. IMO anyone who want to help
should start by contributing to debian-publicity and draft announces
that can be sent without real timing issue. Some people are sending
ideas for various news that could be relayed... They need to be
reformulated in proper english. If for some reasons, it doesn't work for
debian-news, they can always be sent on times.debian.net.

As usual, even if Martin Joey Schulze has made mistakes in the past, it's
important to work with him. I'll gladly discuss with volunteers and Joey
to try to find out a compromise.

> Do you think a delegation of one person is enough for the press team
> this far?

No.

There's also Alexander Schmehl behind the alias press.TakeThisOut@d.o but he can't
send announces to the mailing lists.

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog

Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/

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Frank Küster · External Since: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 263

Anthony Towns <aj.DeleteThis@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:

> In general, if someone else is in charge of something -- like Joey
> and press stuff -- and you don't want to work with them, I think
> it's better to do things independently rather than fight over the
> infrastructure.

I think this attitude is exactly what causes the infrastructure problems
in Debian.

"don't want to work with them" is just an other way to express "don't
want to work exactly the way they used to work in the past", and in fact
any addition to a team will and should change the way things are done.

So this means that either nothing happens, or we create duplicate
infrastructure - not because the new thing serves a different purpose,
just because the old is "occupied".

I think instead we should try to cooperate and find solutions that
address the concerns of all involved, and reuse existing infrastructure.

(By the way, this is not specific to the press/news issue - in fact I
personally have never found that to be a problem, and I've found Joey
someone with whom it's generally fun to work with.)

Regards, Frank
--
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)

MJ Ray · External Since: Jun 02, 2005 Posts: 272

Anthony Towns <aj DeleteThis @azure.humbug.org.au>
> [...] there are plenty of journos interested in Debian who are
> happy to talk to developers directly if they've got something newsworthy,
> and we've all got the ability to start our own website or mailing list
> with global reach -- the only thing we need to do is build a reputation
> for posting interesting things in our own right, rather than making use
> of the reputation Joey's built for -news or -announce. [...]
> I think he deserves to have people working with him in the way he wants
> rather than just having people given enough access that they can ignore
> him and post whatever they want.

And so, a dichotomy of Joey's way or no way is constructed needlessly?

I think it's a good example of how press is (not) working that we have
a fair number of journalists reading d-d-a, planet and IRC meetings,
so we have to watch what we write everywhere. I don't think press is
giving reporters what they want (although sometimes I don't want
SJVish hacks to get what they want).

The above message from Anthony Towns looks awfully like another suggestion
that if DDs are unhappy with the current situation, and the responsible
delegate (or delegate's delegate or whatever press is) ignores complaints,
then forking debian's infrastructure is the only option. I think we've
seen similar claims before and people may remember how much I dislike
that view.

However, this is even worse: in this case, DDs can only *reinvent*
debian's infrastructure, building their own press contacts databases and
hosting their own lists elsewhere. It's not a case of taking a copy of
something like dak and forking part of the project. The new DDs simply
don't have access to the current system to copy it.

This unreasonable policy will lead the project into yet more wasted work
and I believe that alone is sufficient reason to dismiss Anthony Towns.

Please, vote NOTA above Anthony Towns!
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