Re: Do we release SC or not?

On Sunday, September 5, 2010, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> I've thought of going this route as well, but wasn't really happy with the
> outcomes I could imagine. 4.5.0 as an example:
> 
> "KDE Marble Brings Routing To the Free Desktop",
> "Plasma's Notification Area Revamped"

this is focusing too closely on the details, imho. these would make good 
subheadings or attached articles, but for the main headline it could perhaps 
be: "New KDE Releases Provides Improvements For Your Mobile Life" and then tie 
in a few different mobility stories; or "KDE Increases Efficiency With New 
Release" and provide information on things like the notification area. 

ok, those were pulled out of my rectum with about 30s of thought; we can 
probably come up with more clever benefit statements. if we line up the 6-12 
points we'd like to push we can identify the most common benefit and headline 
around that.

but the user doesn't really care about routing or notification area revamps. 
what they care about is what they can expect to improve in their life from 
upgrading. "Oh, hey, this software is going to make my life better when I'm on 
the move." or "Wow, I'll enjoy using my computer more now that the UI is so 
much sleeker!" that might indeed be because of marble's routing or plasma's 
notifications .. but we need to hook them with the benefits in the title and 
then hold them with the details in the body.

so, less specificity in the headlines than the examples you provided, perhaps.

> And a couple of others. My problem was that it'd only concentrate on an
> individual part, and I didn't want to leave anybody out. Then you'd end up
> with:
> 
> "New KDE Products Improve Usability"

which is unecessarily broad. what aspect of usability? or even: what is 
usability?
 
> (Which is actually not bad, but very low on details.)

yes; we couldn't run with such a meme more than once without getting quickly 
repetative :)

> This kind of thing
> would work if we came up with a real story for a release. The Social

exactly :)

> Desktop is one very nice release story (different aspects of one theme,
> sufficiently unique to KDE: It was picked up very well). The problem is
> that  there is often no such theme, especially not for x.y.z releases, or
> that the significant improvements (our key points in the announcements are
> spread over different areas ("KDevelop now with Integrated Debugger
> Visualization, KHangMan has 20 New Levels, all in Pink"):

"KDE Update Brings Enhanced Productivity and Fun For Programmers and Gamers 
Alike" ;)
 
> "Updated KDE Products Improves Stabiltiy, Performance,
> Internationalization"
> 
> and variations of that theme. Nothing particularly exciting (especially
> since we do have those releases once monthly).

"KDE SC 4.5.1" isn't exciting either. if anything, it's less exciting. so i'm 
not too concerned about this. :)

we also have two slightly different topics going here: one is about bug fix 
updates which happen at regular intervals and which have little 
differentiating benefits, and the other is how to frame our semi-annual 
releases.

the monthly improvement releases probably do need a slightly separate 
treatment. we could simply boilerplate it with "September 2010 KDE Update 
Releases" and then get specific about which releases are out. we could even 
aggregate other update releases that happen on other days that month (Amarok, 
Digikam, KOffice) to get us all a bit more notice / press and give them sense 
of greater rhythm across our various projects.

> The case for putting release numbers into announcement titles is that it
> makes it easier for journalists to write something, namely the usual
> story: "KDE x.y.z is out, this and that has been fixed, yadda yadda..."

that's the body, not the headline. our announcement can have the version # in 
the body as well. i don't think our goal should be to have journalists 
headlining our version #s when we could have them headlining our virtues.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks

 
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