John Galt wrote: > I'm sure everybody has seen what happened when a mailinglist post by Bruce > Perens got "leaked" to Slashdot. I see part of the problem that the > "news" people are seeing a dearth of news from the Debian Project, so are > skimming the mailinglists as a substitute for timely information from the > Debian Project. For example, both Potato's attempted freeze and its > subsequent delay should've been released to various outlets while it was > still possible to "spin" the story, for want of a better term. Instead, > in both cases, the news got leaked out via the mailinglist posts, which > were written in technicalese and in an informal style that is fine for > mailinglists, but lousy for press releases. The next instance of the > dearth of information from the Debian Project causing damage actually > DID cause Bruce Perens possible legal damage and entirely too real damage > to his Good Name. My suggestion is that the Debian Project > nominates/elects (an) Official Spokesperson(s) to Slashdot, LWN, and all > the "geek news" outlets, said spokesperson to maintain membership in all > Debian mailinglists, and to provide timely, edited information about all > topics that may interest the relevant communities (the Linux community > most obviously, but the BSD community is saying many things about the > Debian/FreeBSD project based again on the information from mailinglists as > well, among others), and also tell the mailinglists affected what's going > out under their AEgis. Another idea that may have merit is to subdivide > the task either by interest group or list--a slashdot commentator, a LWN > commentator, etc. The outlets are already looking at the mailinglists, > the only thing we can do about it now is to provide a better alternative > than publicly airing what were supposed to be semi-private messages.
I think you're profoundly underestimating the influence of DWN. Nearly everything that appears in LWN about debian, and about 50% of what appears in slashdot about debian refers to DWN. So if you want something "spun", you mostly just need to get DWN to spin it. Which might be difficult, as I dislike trying to put a spin on things and try to report objectively and factually. Like it or not, debian is an open project. -- see shy jo, editor, Debian Weekly News
