Re: Op/Ed Articles on KDE

On Tuesday 26 October 2010 16:14:06 Carl Symons wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Justin Kirby <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 7:28 AM, Stuart Jarvis <[email protected]>
> >> > I am a bit confused. On the one hand I see the advantage of such an
> >> > aggregation site like Oriol proposed. On the other hand I see the
> >> > disadvantage of having one more site. It was discussed last week at
> >> > the openSUSE conference how the different openSUSE communication
> >> > channels could be reduced. Perhaps it could be done within the Dot,
> >> > but special marked as "personal opinion" like a column in serious
> >> > newspapers.
> > 
> > Thinking about it further I do start to find myself agreeing with this
> > more for the sake of consolidating our efforts, so long as these
> > articles were labeled clearly to avoid tampering with the Dot's position
> > as our official news source.
> 
> I'm on a local FOSS mailing list. While the content is mostly news,
> there are a few op/ed submissions. Those op/ed topics generate far
> more activity--comments, new thoughts/thoughts building others, civil
> disagreement.
> 
> Marking "personal opinion" would work. The comments are "personal
> opinion anyway. Dot != Pravda
> 
> >> The benefits of starting it as an independent site are, imho:
> >> 
> >> 1. Freedom - it can be a bit controversial and explore boundaries
> >> because it's
> >> not 'official'. For example, we could have an article setting out the
> >> urgent
> >> need for KDE developers to embrace Mono (if you can find someone to
> >> argue that
> >> - it's not my opinion...). On the Dot that would - currently - be read
> >> as official news that KDE was going to rebuild it's software on Mono
> > 
> > Well, that's mostly true.  Though if we had a very clearly marked
> > category I think we could avoid this.  Think about regular
> > newspapers...they tend to have a section like this and readers know that
> > articles within it are only the opinion of the writer and not the entire
> > paper/organization.

I think newspapers are too different to compare (they don't tend to have 
opinion pieces about themselves for example)

> > If we did move this to the Dot eventually I think
> > that in addition to having a separate category for this we could also
> > include some title in all such articles since some people probably don't
> > even notice the categories and we'd want this to be really obvious.
> >  E.g. they all say "Editorial:" before whatever the normal article title
> > is or something.

'Editorial:' is a bad word to use because it implies that it is the Dot's 
position. To go back to the newspaper analogy (which I said was invalid, but 
nevermind...) the 'editorial' /is/ the newspaper's official view on stuff. These 
articles would not be the Dot's official view (we don't have one). Using 
'Opinion:' could be ok

> > Maybe even a Dot article explaining that we're adding
> > opinion pieces prior to posting the first opinion article would be good.

It can be tacked on to the first article, I think.

> > Or at the top/bottom paragraph there could be a short blurb saying "This
> > article is an editorial, and is solely the expressed opinion of the
> > author.  It does not represent any official stance of KDE or the Dot."
> > 
> >> 2. Speed - we don't have to reposition the Dot, get someone to produce
> >> an 'opinion' template/style/category etc before we get started. Also
> >> the articles
> >> don't get delayed by the normal Dot delays
> > 
> > True, though if we get Oriol and anyone else that would've ended up
> > helping with this other site to pitch in as Dot editors perhaps those
> > delays would generally be shorter since we'd have more Dot staff?  Plus
> > articles like this generally wouldn't be very time sensitive since
> > they're not your typical news.

I meant speed as in the time between now and making this happen at all

> >> 3. Less expectation/pressure - it's 'just a blog' in a sense. If it has
> >> lots
> >> of content: cool. If it doesn't: nevermind.
> > 
> > But this could also be a great way to generate some real conversations in
> > the Dot comments.  We could use articles like this to build buzz around
> > certain topics in an edgier fashion than we could otherwise.  Does that
> > come with more pressure for the writer than on a normal blog?  Yeah
> > maybe, since the reader base is larger...but I think people will still
> > contribute articles anyways.  It might also put more pressure on the
> > editors in terms of drawing the line between what they allow and
> > disallow since these wouldn't be cut and dry statements of fact.

It will put more pressure on the editors in terms of workload. We need 2-3 
more people at least (but that is true irrespective of inclusion/not of the 
opinion pieces) and if we have more people then it becomes manageable. If as 
you suggest above we get Oriol and others involved - even just specifically for 
this - then that can help

> > In terms of lacking content, I think it's less of a problem if we
> > integrate this into the Dot since we have a regular stream of normal
> > articles.  If this is on a blog by itself and without much content it
> > may never catch on.

It would be on the planet, presumably. However, that is less exposure than the 
Dot (according to conventional wisdom at least)

So, Oriol, what do you think?

I have added an 'Opinion' category to the Dot and put up an example page with 
disclaimer (if that is considered necessary) at:
http://dot.kde.org/2010/10/26/opinion-test-article

I'll also take this to the dot list for feedback, since that also matters 
(everyone on dot is probably also here, but not necessarily paying attention)

Stu
 
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