On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 09:09:27PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Well, last year's election was a bit exceptional in that there was
> almost nothing to do here on -vote. The previous election I participated
> in, OTOH, was one of the most contested elections in Debian's history. I
> guess we're both a bit biased in opposite ways :-)
Deal! :-)
> [Stefano's rebuttal]
> > For once, the idea of talking more with “Debian people” other than
> > DDs/DMs is wonderful—assuming that by that Wouter imagines the DPL
> > attending several events other than our “classical” developer-oriented
> > events. That however is not enough, because the big public of our
> > potential contributors is not (only) there. To that end, I found
> > striking that our Web presence is not mentioned in the platform as an
> > important strategic area to attract more developers.
>
> When I mention "talking" in my platform, I do not (only) mean that
> literally. I intend to "talk" to many people in many ways; One vague
> idea I've been thinking about is a web poll or some such. However, since
> I don't know whether or how that will work out in practice, I didn't
> think it proper to mention it in my platform and thereby make it a
> promise, or some such.
Thanks for the clarification.
FWIW, it seems rather difficult to me to ask the opinion of others about
Debian via a web poll: it is too rigid and it is probably too time
limited (an "always running" poll is not particularly useful). In the
end, I found that the most important input we can get from others is at
the level of their "impressions" about Debian which we think match
strict categories quite often ("we are difficult to use", "we are
flame-ish", "we are free sw extremists", etc.) without necessarily
knowing how much that corresponds to reality. (BTW, this is no real
criticism of the poll proposal, as you said, it is still a vague idea;
it was more on the side of "let's share comments on advanced
proposals".)
That is why I like your idea to go out and seek this kind of feedback
personally (which is how I initially interpreted it), but I still
contend that it must be paired with a proper communication strategy,
which necessarily encompasses our web presence, to let others know what
(we think) Debian is about.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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