On Sun, 2011-12-25 at 17:46 +0100, Kim Leyendecker wrote:

On 25.12.2011 05:55, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:

...

Thanks an awful lot for devoting ceaseless effort to openSUSE Weekly News, Sascha.

I have to tell you, list mates, that I was asked by Sascha whether I can take over the role of the chair of the openSUSE Weekly News Team before he posted the mail to this list, but I couldn't take on the entire burden of the role for now, at least under the current, too laborious procedure of publishing OWN.

As you know,*Weekly* News have to be published*every week*. So contributors cannot take days off unless someone else will step into their shoes. Considering the fact that there are only few contributors for OWN, it will be too much burden for them.

I, like everyone else here, want to pick up and hand on the torch of OWN. But that cannot be done only by me.

As some of you may know, I have my own job which is not dedicated to FLOSS activities. I contribute openSUSE project just as a volunteer on an individual basis. I spend over 10 hours every week for collecting articles for OWN, proofreading it and translating it into Japanese. And realistically speaking, this (10 hours +) is all I can do.

I myself have been concerned about the current situation of OWN - which should be the main format, where is the best workspace for collaborating, the relationship between openSUSE community and open-slx, copyright issue, why native English speakers won't help much for editing *English* Weekly News ... all of these should be reconsidered and improved. Yes, they should be, but I couldn't, because I couldn't squeeze a few extra hours out of my day for that.

Maybe we need to make the current procedure of publishing OWN as simple as possible so that anyone can take over the task in case the main contributors are busy, or, break large tasks into smaller ones and decentralize responsibilities, if we want to continue OWN. But for now, I haven't got the best - or, at least, better - way yet.

Of course I WILL bear a part as much as I can do, but if there is no one who will step forward to bear a part as well, OWN will burn out. Whether we can continue OWN or not depends on the willingness of our community...

First I want to thank Sascha for the great job he did. Then I want to reply to your points.

Let´s go. Doing OWN is a big job, so there should be as many as possible people in the boat. Therefore, you might want to ask the boosters for help.

Then, you Saturu, as the new OWN team leader (I guess you will be the one, right?), should create a team around you. That should be your biggest priority since you haven´t got the time to it all on your own.

I guess asking the boosters would be the best choice,

/kdl

-- Kim Leyendecker, openSUSE Wiki Team GPG Key: 664265369547B825 | leyendecker@opensuse.org http://www.opensuse.org - Linux for open minds

There are several aspects to OWN that make it one of the more unique challenges within the Project. The two that I see are 1) Ability to get a group of people to each commit weekly to their duties, and 2) some technical obstacles some people have faced. For example, I pushed for more broader OWN proofreading and Sascha has done a great job of ensuring since then that more people are aware and can contribute to reviewing OWN before it gets formally published. But, the review process itself wasn't that easy for a lot of people. We could not directly edit without knowledge of HTML and having HTML editing software installed and going through a checkout process. For the marketing team this was different than the standard "edit-as-you-see-it" we experienced in such tools as ietherpad. Of course, ietherpad would not have been a useful tool in OWN's case. And to be sure, while we have seen great commitments from the OWN team, the team itself has been rather small. That was a huge burden on those few people, including Sascha and Satoru. I too agree that Satoru would be a great new lead for OWN. He's been committed to the quality of the production and has been there week after week. But I suggest (at the risk of bikeshedding) that we consider the following: 1. Break down the various tasks within OWN production 2. Broadly within the News Team (or even more broadly within Marketing team), assess each task and see if we can make adjustments thus lowering the barrier for contributions. 3. Work in a more open manner (this is something I'm already seeing improvements in the past few weeks.) 4. As popular as it has been to expect a weekly edition, perhaps we should look at ways to adjust the release schedule in order to reduce the time-commitment burden. Bryen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

2011/12/26 Sascha Manns <Sascha.Manns@open-slx.de>:

Hello Bryen, hello mates,

Bryen M Yunashko wrote at Montag, 26. Dezember 2011, 06:48:10:

...

On Sun, 2011-12-25 at 17:46 +0100, Kim Leyendecker wrote: There are several aspects to OWN that make it one of the more unique challenges within the Project.  The two that I see are 1)  Ability to get a group of people to each commit weekly to their duties, and 2) some technical obstacles some people have faced.

For example, I pushed for more broader OWN proofreading and Sascha has done a great job of ensuring since then that more people are aware and can contribute to reviewing OWN before it gets formally published.  But, the review process itself wasn't that easy for a lot of people.   We could not directly edit without knowledge of HTML and having HTML editing software installed and going through a checkout process.  For the marketing team this was different than the standard "edit-as-you-see-it" we experienced in such tools as ietherpad.

Of course, ietherpad would not have been a useful tool in OWN's case.

And to be sure, while we have seen great commitments from the OWN team, the team itself has been rather small.  That was a huge burden on those few people, including Sascha and Satoru.

I too agree that Satoru would be a great new lead for OWN.  He's been committed to the quality of the production and has been there week after week.    But I suggest (at the risk of bikeshedding) that we consider the following:

1.  Break down the various tasks within OWN production 2.  Broadly within the News Team (or even more broadly within Marketing team), assess each task and see if we can make adjustments thus lowering the barrier for contributions. 3.  Work in a more open manner (this is something I'm already seeing improvements in the past few weeks.) 4.  As popular as it has been to expect a weekly edition, perhaps we should look at ways to adjust the release schedule in order to reduce the time-commitment burden.

Yes, i'm agreeing in all points. I've searched into our Wiki. The "old" Way to contribute and produce the OWN was through using our Wiki. Under: http://en.opensuse.org/Template:Weekly_news_full is the latest Template for the Weekly News. Maybe we can use it again. Other interesting stuff can be found in Portal:Weekly_news.

cu Sascha -- Sincerly yours

Sascha Manns Community &Support Agent open-slx GmbH http://www.open-slx.de (Business) http://saigkill.homelinux.net (Private) This mail is written with Balsam Professional 12.1

First of all a HUGE thank you Sasha (and Satoru) for the great work you have done so far. I think I could help but the next few months I have a lot on my plate, Although I think I could poke some guys to offer help ;-) Maybe some of the guys that contribute on the translation of the Greek OWN, since it is better not to have some translated in Greek issues of weekly news than having no weekly news at all. As others said if the works will be divided, more people can surely work on it more easily, so I would propose a list of the OWN sectors so that people can take each one or two or more sectors. Also I would propose to poke people e.g from KDE team to write the news about KDE. That way it will be less work for everyone. Unfortunately those days not many people are around so poking might take some time :( Kostas -- http://opensuse.gr http://amb.opensuse.gr http://own.opensuse.gr http://warlordfff.tk me I am not me ------- Time travel is possible, you just need to know the right aliens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

Thanks to all of you for caring about OWN and sorry for my late reply. Rajko M. wrote:

On Monday, December 26, 2011 06:48:10 AM Bryen M Yunashko wrote:

...

I too agree that Satoru would be a great new lead for OWN. He's been committed to the quality of the production and has been there week after week. But I suggest (at the risk of bikeshedding) that we consider the following:

1. Break down the various tasks within OWN production

There are 2 categories of tasks for OWN - tasks which should be done over again every week [A], and ones which we need to do initially and as appropriate [B].

Task as in: 1) collecting news (reporters) suitable for people that like to read a lot; the only sacrifice they will have to make is to report interesting discussions 2) selecting news to be published (section or issue editor) - suitable for people with talent to prioritize articles that are reported by (1);

They can be categorized as [A]. In addition to above 2 things, there are much more tasks for category [A]. I'm going to list the tasks along the release cycle of OWN (I assume publishing main OWN in Wiki format first and convert it to other formats if needed). 0) preparing a draft page (or draft pages) for the next issue. - task of editors 1) collecting news and put them on the draft page. - this task can be open to everyone - but 'everyone can do' will often result 'no one will actually do'. So, responsible persons for each corner might be needed. - it would be better if somebody can write original articles for OWN. 2) selecting news to be published and making RC. - task of editors - things below should also be checked in this phase: -- all the essential articles are aggregated? -- are there any duplicated articles? -- all the articles are put on the appropriate corners? -- all the links are correct? -- all the articles are correctly formatted? -- all articles are introduced/quoted without license violation? 3) post the 'call for proofreading' email to -marketing list. - task of editors 4) proofreading - in this phase, proofreading should be done by ones who didn't do (2). - proofreaders will check the items listed in (2) once again in this phase and in addition to those, below things should be checked: -- whether mandatory articles are lacked or not. -- are there any TOO BIASED or TOO OFFENSIVE articles which should be removed? 5) wrapping up the release version - task of editors 6) converting release version to other formats (pure HTML, PDF and so on) and put them on the appropriate place (OPTIONAL) - task of editors, if this option should be done. 7) posting release announcement to lists and news.o.o - task of editors 8) spreading the words to all over the world - this task can be done by anyone - but same as (1), 'everyone can do' will often result 'no one will actually do'. So, responsible persons for this task might be needed. 9) archiving the past issue for reference - task of editors And things listed below can be categorized as [B].

3) taking care of layout (layout editors) - suitable for those that are able to read http://useit.com and apply advices as much as they relate to OWN

- considering which corners are needed, the order of them and format of each entry. - preparing needed templates.

4) finding technical solutions for problems that (1) and (2) face (tech support) - suitable for people that have experience with software and want to listen all other

- once the initial templates and workflow of editing/publishing OWN would be fixed, this task will be only needed when desired.

5) finding artwork for OWN (art editors) - looking for art that looks good and can be published on OWN (licenses, appropriate content)

- I would appreciate it if artwork team will help this task. In addition to above things, some more things are needed: - preparing and maintaining the documents on how people can help and contribute OWN. - mentoring newly participated contributors and translators. - it would be better if we can have a good method for translating original OWN into other languages semi-automatically. - holding team meetings when needed. -- posting announcements for that, preparing items to be discussed and summarizing the results of meetings are included in this task. Now, you may have understood that all the tasks cannot be done by few persons. As a translator, I have to do a lot more to publish Japanese translations.

...

2. Broadly within the News Team (or even more broadly within Marketing team), assess each task and see if we can make adjustments thus lowering the barrier for contributions.

1) I would propose as a first task to cleanup current layout. Even in a pdf form that should preserve original layout it is not easy to read OWN. I can take on that, but I'm familiar with the wiki, so anything I can do will be there.

2) Second, if wiki is selected as a base medium for OWN creation, I would propose to break single template page into sections. See http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:GCI_tasks to get idea how that will work. This will lower a chance to have collisions when saving edits. As there is already some solution with GCI pages it should not be a problem to apply that to OWN.

The main reason why the current method (edited in Docbook/XML format) is chosen is, we can generate several formats of OWN from one source. But as a result, the look of HTML in Bento theme (news.o.o) isn't good and good-looking Wiki pages cannot be generated easily so that translators have to make Wiki pages manually by themselves if they want to publish translated OWN in Wiki format. So, I myself can agree your proposal, if no one will argue strongly that we need HTML and PDF version of OWN in addition to Wiki version. Or, if someone knows a good way to generate HTML and PDF from Wiki, this problem can be solved. However, I think we need to archive the past issues. Is there any good (and easy) way to archive them if we select GCI_tasks style?

3) We should consider alternative browsing methods and layouts to currently used whole OWN issue on one page. One alternative is multiple pages, with browsing aid as Previous, Next, Index, present on all pages.

The idea itself sounds good to me. But it would be better if you can create a draft template with this idea for further discussion.

...

3. Work in a more open manner (this is something I'm already seeing improvements in the past few weeks.)

I have feeling that since OWN left wiki there was no easy way to contribute, which left team without new contributors.

...

4. As popular as it has been to expect a weekly edition, perhaps we should look at ways to adjust the release schedule in order to reduce the time-commitment burden.

I proposed some time ago to consider alternatives to having full blown issue every week, ie. keeping every section every week. Also, we must consider how to join effort between OWN and openSUSE Magazine.

I'd like to ask you all, list mates, once again. Please step forward if you are willing to undertake some tasks listed above responsibly. As I wrote in the previous post, I've been spending over 10 hours for editing, proofreading and translating OWN (7 or more hours of which are needed for translating, though) every week and that's max-out for me as a volunteer. I can't calculate how many hours are needed for whole tasks right now, but the max hours that I can dedicate for editing main OWN are 3-4 hours. If 10 hours are needed for publishing OWN in total, 6-7 hours have to be dedicated by others than me. And, if there's only one more contributor, (s)he has to dedicate 6-7 hours, but if there are 7 more contributors, each has to dedicate just 1 hour. That's a simple calculation. ;-) BTW, the current release schedule (publishing OWN on every Saturday) can be changed according to convenience of contributors. Best, -- _/_/ Satoru Matsumoto - openSUSE Member - Japan _/_/ _/_/ Marketing/Weekly News/openFATE Screening Team _/_/ _/_/ mail: helios_reds_at_gmx.net / irc: HeliosReds _/_/ _/_/ http://blog.zaq.ne.jp/opensuse/ _/_/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org