UbuntuNews

Revision 8 as of 2007-06-04 07:03:07

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Summary

This spec outlines the plans to create an ubuntu-news team which contains all the various initiatives dealing with news in the Ubuntu community, to provide them with single resources and to assist the people dealing with them to share efforts and work more efficiently.

Rationale

There are a number of different news-related projects in the Ubuntu community. Examples are:

Currently these projects are fragmented - the Fridge has its own mailing list where stories are submitted and discussed; the Newsletter is dealt with by the marketing team (which is not an intuitive team to be dealing with it); the Magazine has its own resources; and the website is worked on privately by the Ubuntu webmaster. This causes a certain amount of inefficiency.

The Ubuntu News team intends to provide a single set of resources for these teams to discuss and forage for news in and around the Ubuntu community and formulate appropriate stories.

It does not intend to unify the projects or disturb the workflows of any of the groups of people working on each initiative.

Use Cases

Elizabeth comes across a story on Planet Ubuntu which is newsworthy. She is unsure of which particular initiative might be interested in it, and mails it separately to the Fridge editors and the marketing team for inclusion in the newsletter.

Isaac is an Ubuntu community member and is interested in contributing to the weekly newsletter. He is not interested in marketing as a concept and is surprised to find that the weekly newsletter comes within the competence of the marketing team.

Design

One single mailing list for anyone to submit/suggest stories for any of the various news initiatives and discussion of them. The various editors of the projects can then discuss whether the particular story is appropriate for their particular project, and proceed accordingly.

Implementation

Rename the current [https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/fridge-devel fridge-devel] mailing list to ubuntu-news-submissions. The list should be open to anyone to subscribe to. This has the beneficial side effect that discussions about the Fridge and UWN are open to all community members.

Advertise this new list as a place for anyone to post stories or news items which might be worthy for consideration on the Fridge, UWN, the Ubuntu website, and so on.

Establish #ubuntu-news irc channel, and make #ubuntu-fridge redirect there.

Outstanding Issues

The existing projects should keep their existing editorial structure. See ["Fridge"] and ["UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/EditingPolicies"].

Launchpad team - a team has been created at https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-news/. However, given that this project is not about creating a new team, it should be reworked so that it contains only subteams, such as the teams working on UWN and the Fridge, and no individuals. Creating a new team risks disturbing the existing editorial structure for the projects and adding another line of people-management that is unnecessary and inappropriate.

Comments/Discussion

My vote goes to keeping the #ubuntu-fridge, and making #ubuntu-news redirect there. Reason(s):

1. The Fridge has more of a public face so to speak, and it will be nicer to have all the news teams under one roof. To quote from [http://fridge.ubuntu.com/about the about page on Fridge], its the information hub for news about local marketing, advocacy, team events, official announcements, LoCo team events, announcing anything else that happens in the Ubuntu community.

2. If we want to keep news in a single place lets keep them together with the Fridge as the core with other groups collaborating with it to make it whole. The Fridge is already well known but few people know how to post stories or get news to us. So we just use the existing Fridge (list and irc channel can be open to all) as a place for anyone to post stories or news items which might be worthy for consideration on any of these : the Fridge, UWN, the Ubuntu website.

3. Most importantly we try to avoid duplication of effort with too many mailing lists seeking to accomplish one goal -NEWS- which is what we are all after. This should be an integrated goal, not a fragmented approach.

4. Volunteers - Like Daniel mentioned earlier, what is lacking is not news, but active volunteers.... people who actually get stuff done and pick up threads when the going is tough for other team members. In short, we need more active volunteers for both the Fridge and UWN.

My.02 (-[http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/VidAyer VidAyer])


  • Vid - I disagree quite strongly. To address your points 1 and 2, there is a clear reason to distinguish between the various projects involved in these initiatives, they have different personnel and different scopes. There is no clear reason to "put the Fridge at the head" of this, ahead of other initiatives. It is simply a project with existing editors and existing processes. In general terms I agree with your points 3 and 4, but they are not actually justifications for your starting point. Point 3 is addressed by this spec, and point 4 is not directly relevant to this spec, but rather requires another one. --["mdke"]


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