Re: State of Debian Project News

[Jon Evans <saeng2oo@googlemail.com>]

Hello Alexander,

Sorry for taking a day or two to reply...

It does seem a shame to let the debian-news list die as it was well received.
A number of the more mainstream news sources used it I notice.

I know that personally I'd be able to help write the odd story... but there's no way that I would be able to do it alone.
And I may well be wrong, but does anyone else on the list have the resources or the time to do it alone?

So if it is going to survive it needs to be more of a group effort?

Surely there's a better way to handle the workflow that would be required? 

What happened to the new site that was being developed for debian-news?
As it is the wiki seems to be more of a problem than a solution.

Is there anyway at the moment to easily find out what needs to be done?
A list of jobs requiring attention would be useful.

How about timing? Should it be monthly or quarterly?
If it was quarterly then a respectable set of deadlines could be arranged... especially for the poor old proofreaders who were being asked at one point to do the proofing with only an hour or two to spare.
If anything did require to be put to press quickly then it could be done as a special edition.

So yes, I'd be willing to lend a hand with the writing. 
But as it is I can't help but feel that as long as the organisation is so chaotic that it's going to be difficult to achieve much.

All the best,
Jon

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <tolimar@debian.org> wrote:

Hi!

As you might have noticed the latest issue of the Debian Project News is
loooooooooooooong overdue.  I'm very sorry, but as a matter of fact, I
simple don't find the time to edit them myself. As a matter of fact I
completely underestimated the amount of time needed and hoped for much
more contribution from others.

So the big question is:  What now?  Shall we just let them die again,
until someone finds the time to really take care of our newsletter?  Or
is there someone willing to spend some time on it?  Webml commit access
can surely be arranged, creating the mail version is fairly easy, since
the French translators created a very nice script for that.  We just
need someone - or better - some people to write the articles about
interesting events, summarise interesting threads on the lists.

For now I'm, still willing to sent them out once they are written and
will at least try to help by pointing to things that should IMHO be
mentioned; but that's pretty much everything I can offer as help (well,
beside some wisdom and explanations of the current workflow if there's
interest).


So, any volunteers?


Best regards,
 Alexander

PS: Sorry.