On Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:56:48 +0200 Patrick Lauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | > I also believe that when posting an article or interview, a copy | > should be sent to the relevant people to ensure that they are ok | > with what is being posted (my dev of the week interview, for | > example, was rather screwed up and misrepresentative). | My fault.
Good start. Now, are you going to post corrections? | > When someone contacts GWN to have | > something corrected, it would be appreciated were the GWN staff to | > at least deign to acknowledge receipt, even if for some reason they | > choose not to honour the corrections or post a retraction (although | > refusing to publish corrections is extremely insulting to those | > wronged). | The reason for that is that the GWN is mostly sent out by mail. This | makes corrections a bit more difficult, but I think having a sane | policy for that would be helpful. Publish a 'corrections' section in the next edition? | > Having read through the archives, I notice that there was once a | > time when the GWN was a great publication, and I would like to | > think that it could become great yet again; in its current state, | > though, it is doing more harm than good. | | Agreed. Given that it is doing more harm than good, should it be discontinued until a solution is found? | > Another complaint is that the GWN rejects any writing style which | > has any degree of character or levity. Any attempt at dececnt | > writing (the kind that would make it into publication in English | > newspapers or magazines, for example), is met with the claim that | > "the GWN is not a humorous publication". | | Blame the flamefests of the past. Whenever attempts were made to give | the GWN more dynamic it was flamed down (because ze german humor is | not funny! Nein! ;-) ) | So the consensus was to keep the silly jokes out of the GWN since | always someone misunderstands or complains. I'd like to have it a bit | more open, funny, enjoyable ... but there's only so much I can do. Christel did not talk about "silly jokes". She spoke about "decent writing (the kind that would make it into publication in newspapers or magazines, for example)". There's a rather large difference (well, if you assume she means *respectable* newspapers and magazines -- good examples for anyone wanting examples are the Times, the Guardian or the Scotsman). I'd imagine the distinction could be not too obvious for some non-native speakers, but it is a large and very important distinction. You don't have to be silly or boring to be considered respectable. Take Jeremy Clarkson, for example. He's frequently rather outrageous, very very funny, prone to using extremely colourful metaphors and writes for the highly respectable Sunday Times, which has such a good reputation not despite having such writers but because of it. -- Ciaran McCreesh Mail : ciaran dot mccreesh at blueyonder.co.uk -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
