[kde-linux] Users guide to KDE?

[Kevin Krammer]

Hi Derrik,

On Sunday 06 July 2008, Gaffer. wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> On Sunday 06 July 2008 14:55, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > But it seems that sharing insight into the ongoing development
> > process is sometimes interpreted as some kind of release
> > announcement, dispite release announcement usually being marked as
> > such.
>
> Enthusiastic journalism, maybe ?

Well, it certainly amplifies the issue, though it used to do more good than 
harm, i.e. there were only a few sensationalistic articles and most press 
coverage was actually helping to get information about projects one wasn't 
following it oneself.

Since the root of the problem is readers not understanding or misunderstanding 
what they are reading, it amplifies this problem.

So unless it is possible to make people aware of the existance of diary-style 
information as an addition to press releases, it will probably be necessary 
to have very tight accreditation for journalists when it comes to development 
information.

I actually find this quite intriguing, given the huge number of people with 
blogs and users of social networking sites, that so many still see any kind 
of HTTP accessible text as a kind of announcement.

I would have expected that by now anything not being on the very front page of 
an official website be considered inofficial or private point of view.

> I take your point.  The user base is expanding and must continue to do
> so.  In this respect I am guilty of pushing this expansion.  Most
> users are not interested in involvement, just getting a job done
> without the baggage that comes with using M$ products !

I am very glad that the user base is expanding since this shows that our 
contributions are actually useful for an increasing number of others, however 
it seems that some of this additions to our audience has not yet progressed 
into the world of personal content creation and is still stuck in the world 
of external entities controlling content creation and distribution.

> > Which means that those of us who like to get excited by things to
> > come will have to spend a lot more time hunting down information
> > themselves. And I was so looking forward to spend less time reading
> > tens of mailinglists but rather reading a couple of "planet" blog
> > aggregators.
>
> I have no suggestions how to handle this.  The whole OSS ethos is that
> its open, open to all.

Exactly!
The questions is why do some people help to demolish the Free Culture aspects 
just because they prefer to be spoon fed prefiltered stuff. There are still 
enough source willing to do that so why not let others have their preferred 
way in parallel?

> > Maybe there is a way in between, like having invite-only planets
> > for those who value in-depth information and just have release
> > announcements for those who want to think in terms of finished
> > products.
>
> That may be one way to go !   At least then you have a conduit where
> you can feed relevant information to the end users.

Actually this is kind of an almost worst-case scenario, like giving up on the 
idea of people actually using their brains for thinking.

I know that the "people are sheep" approach is widely accepted and 
successfully deployed but I do strongly believe that we can do better.
We probably just need to adjust the level at which to ignore those who don't 
understand the difference between a person's opinion and a project's 
statement.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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