[kde-linux] Users guide to KDE?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Sunday 06 July 2008, Randy Kramer wrote:
> Note that I've reordered at least one paragraph to make my response more
> convenient for myself (and hopefully, more coherent for others ;-)

No problem :)

> On Sunday 06 July 2008 09:55 am, Kevin Krammer wrote:

> > I am afraid that it currently looks like the user base has expanded
> > beyond those who value first hand information about what is going on and
> > will move the information culture away from community style to top-down
> > controlled coporate style.
>
> I hate to think that has to be the case ...

Agreed!

> > 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.
>
> That puts a burden on the reader to remember that if a post doesn't say
> "release announcement" he has to be consider that the information could
> represent something further in the future than the next release.
>
> As primarily a reader (rather than an announcer), I'd propose instead a
> (short) disclaimer on each post, something like (but to be wordsmithed to
> make it as clear and concise as possible):
>
> "Discussions on this mailing list may refer to features that won't make it
> into the next KDE release, or even to speculative features that never make
> it into a KDE release.  Before spreading rumors, ask or just please be
> patient."

I don't see how this puts less burden on the reader, since it is still a form 
of marking articles. Even worse now the marking is not used to highlight the 
few special articles, but to emphasis all the personal opinions.

From my point of view this would be kind of backwards, especially since the 
media (e.g. blog, mailinglist) already shows the difference to the official 
press releases (on project's homepage or directly linked to from there).

> I guess I'm trying to avoid "invite-only planets for those who value
> in-depth information".  Maybe that would not be so objectionable if the
> invite-only net is fairly wide or not difficult to pass--I'd start by
> suggesting that such planets (I don't really know what a planet is) should
> be open to almost any interested user, and maybe, when a user subscribes,
> he should read a more extended form of the disclaimer.

I hope we will never have to surrender to the closed information world by 
adopting their strategies, but if that is the last resort before not 
communicating at all, restrictions will have to be hard to pass, since 
the "fairly wide or not difficult to pass" approach has than been proved to 
be a failure.

Lets hope that for once humanity will not be held back by those who think that 
the ability to think for yourself is just an abomination of nature.

Cheers,
Kevin

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