Re: Releases overwhelming us - need for improving the dot?

Am Freitag, 11. April 2014, 16.19:16 schrieb Carl:

Morning Carl and Co

[snip: Drupal stuff]

> There is already a template in place for release announcements on the Dot.
> I don't know how it works, but it's plain to see from looking at a series
> of release stories on the Dot.
> 
> There is also a rough template for kde.org/announcements about releases. I
> don't know how this works either, but it clearly is templated. The notes
> etherpad serves as something of a template.

I'm not sure if you mean that but for the recent (last weeks and months) minor 
releases my procedure was always the same: take the last announcement from the 
dot, put it to notes.kde.org, change the links and version numbers, add some 
small stuff (bugs fixed in Umbrello instead of Okular this time) and then add 
it to kde.org (for translators, mostly done my Albert), email to kde-announce 
and dot story.

> The Workbench module looks inviting, but I don't see how it deals with the
> image manipulation issue, which is the thing that takes the most time for
> me. It may do that, but without installing the module and experimenting
> it's tough to tell.
> 
> It's not clear who will be using an enhanced Dot interface. Where are the
> new content contributors going to be coming from?

Yes, that's important to keep an eye on. One proposal (less for new content, 
more for regular release announcement work, at least for the start) we (Jos 
and me) talked about was to ask for one or two people who we'd mentor for some 
time: show them how to do the release announcement work.

> I suggest looking at the entire process and leave Drupal alone as much as
> possible.
> 
> However, we definitely need to do something. I appreciate the work that Jos
> and Mario put into the release publicity. Others provide content or
> editing. It all takes a lot of work. And it seems to always be a scramble.
> 
> In that scramble, actual work on the Dot and kde.org/announcements are not
> the big issue. Providing templates and better editing tools there are not
> going to change the situation much. Where we've had difficulty is getting
> meaningful content ... What's new? What are the big stories? We struggle
> to get that.

There I had an idea to formalize this process a bit. So make a short wiki page 
or some other page and announces this in KDE as widely as possible. The wiki 
page would tell what people, groups and projects should send us (promo team) 
for a good promo/announcement text and when they should do it. Something like 
(really raw):
- 4 weeks in advance for big releases/two weeks for minor ones
- Include:
-- 4-5 links to blog posts about the topic
-- link to bugzilla page
-- 4-5 screenshots (to select 2-3)
-- It would be an asset to include a short text (5-10 sentences or more) which 
we could still edit and adapt.

And yes this is mostly about release announcements and not other stuff. I 
think that's because I mostly work on this stuff in the recent weeks ;-).

> Then there's a fair amount of editing to smooth out the inputs from various
> people and projects.
> 
> Off to translators who need several days with the final English version.
> 
> Screenshots.
> 
> What's really needed is a process that delivers those goods.
> 
> It seems to me that a hackathon would be useful for sorting out the
> process. Randa is also out for me. Akademy would be better.

Makes sense. I thinkt in Randa I won't have time to work on anything else than 
organizational stuff but I won't be at Akademy this year as well (which is ok 
for me so you can to the work ;-).

Best regards
Mario

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