On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 06:24:41PM -0400, David Prévot wrote: > It's the second time [1] such an advertisement reaches the DPN, and I > don't find it suitable at all. I think it was a mistake the first time, > and it would be a shame to consider the first error as a precedent. For > the same reason we don't do sponsorship link in the official website > main page, I believe we should not relay such campaign in the official DPN. I didn't want to chime in this thread, mainly because there are active editors of DPN and I think they are fully entitle to decide an "editorial position" on these matters. I still maintain that, but I'd like to point out to an implication which is present in this thread and that I find a bit disturbing. The implication is that *informing* about some money-related initiative it's the same of *advertising* such initiative. I maintain that informing and advertising are two different things and, in terms of communication, we see that difference on many media. A newspaper might have an advertisement link to some campaign, if they really want to advertise it, or it might just have an article describing that someone is doing some fund-raising. Another example comes from wikipedia, where articles written as advertisement are explicitly labeled as so and requested to be amended to have a more informative style. Unfortunately, the difference among informing and advertising is often blurry. It is, ultimately, a matter of writing style (another subject on which an "editorial board" should usually have a stance.) So, by all means, I encourage the people regularly doing DPN to decide on these matters, but it would be nice to distinguish two separate judgements. One on whether entries written as *advertisements* are welcome or not. And one on whether DPN should refrain from *informing* about fund-raising activities related to Debian individuals or not. Cheers. PS for disclosure: - I've strongly objected in the past, in agreement with the Press Team, on using Debian *press releases* for advertisement of this very same initiative - I've accepted to be a testimonial of Raphael initiative, but I see that as a personal choice that should bear no weight in deciding editorial positions of DPN -- Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o . Maître de conférences ...... http://upsilon.cc/zack ...... . . o Debian Project Leader ....... @zack on identi.ca ....... o o o « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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