Re: Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-17 Thread Charles Plessy
Le Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 10:17:06AM +0700, Paul Wise a écrit :
 
 Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you
 follow? and contribute to? As well as a general list I'm interested in
 specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-de...@l.d.o,
 debian-proj...@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc).

Hi Paul, Raphael and everybody,

For the general lists, I am subscribed to -devel, -project, -devel-announce,
-private, -vote and -policy. As part of my packaging activitites, I am also
subscribed to -med, -science, -blends and more recently -qa. I also lurk on
-powerpc, because I used Debian on a G5 for a couple of years, but I am not
really contributing anymore there. Et bien sûr, je suis aussi sur -french et
-devel-french.

On the web I read Planet Debian, but never visit forums. I do not go on IRC
either (too fast for me). I sometimes attend the Tôkyô area Debian study group,
but it has become quite rare because I often decide to stay at home to pet my
packages instead, or to join a monthly saké-tasting party that often hapens the
same Saturday…

If I am elected DPL, I will temporarly reduce my activities in the Debian Med
project. But I will take more opportunities to meet other DDs in Japan. I will
not significatly change my mailing list subscribtions. I will go on IRC if
something is planned there, but not on a regular basis. I will use the
-devel-announce, -devel, -project and -private mailing lists as main
communication channels, and refrain to make fresh announces elsewhere. I will
report about the spendings I approved every two months, perhaps on -private if
it discloses too much personnal informations, and send a general report
every other month on -devel-announce.

Lastly, although the atmoshphere improved, I would like our mailing lists even
more free from aggression. Things like invitations to stop whining, to change
project, and questions about one's mental health hurt, are inappropriate and
off-topic, and increase the noise. I will ask the listmasters to not hesitate
to ban people for a couple of days if they post a completely useless and
aggressive message.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-15 Thread Wouter Verhelst
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 10:17:06AM +0700, Paul Wise wrote:
 Dear candidates,
 
 Debian has a lot of project communications media; lists, forums, IRC,
 planet, bts, RT. There are also a lot of external communications media
 covering Debian; news media, , social networks, blogs, microblogging
 sites  non-IRC chat, video sites and so on.
 
 Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you
 follow?

I follow several mailinglists (some in what could be considered a
lurking mode, some more actively), the blogs on Planet Debian, and I am
reasonably active on a number of IRC channels on both OFTC and freenode.


As for external channels, I tend to read LWN infrequently; and when
someone posts a link to some news article related to Debian through some
other communication channel, I often read that, too, but I don't go
actively hunting for such articles. I usually find that external
communication about Debian, when not actively pursued, does not tell me
things I do not already know.

 and contribute to?

My blog is on Planet Debian, and though my blogging frequency has
reduced, I still consider myself a somewhat active blogger.

I don't believe in microblogging, and am offended by Facebook's excuse
for a privacy policy, so don't go there either.

 As well as a general list I'm interested in
 specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-de...@l.d.o,
 debian-proj...@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc).

Phew. Are you sure? That list is rather long, and would get dull rather
quickly.

If you really must know, most of that information isn't private, anyway.
For the IRC channels, there's the /whois command, that (at least on
OFTC, not sure about other networks) will tell you what channels I'm on.
For mailinglists: I usually do post to lists that I'm subscribed to,
though not always as frequently. I rarely unsubscribe from a list,
though it does happen on the more active lists that I only manage to
mark as read once in a blue moon.

I don't do forums; they just don't work for me.

 How do you see those two lists changing if you become DPL?

Not by much; there will just be more mails, and probably some more lists
that will go in lurking mode (though not too many, I hope).

 Which of these communications media do you feel is important for the
 DPL to read?

Since the official communication channel within Debian is email, I
believe that should be the only bits that are *important* for the DPL to
read. Anything else is good, but not necessary.

 Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some
 of these media.

Debian is mail. Period. If you don't have mail, you can't do Debian.

Planet Debian has a semi-official status. That is, often there's
interesting bits of news posted there, but it shouldn't contain
important bits of information -- those should be on the one and only
required mailinglist.

IRC, to me, is just a way to relax and to get quick help on some
matters. Since there is an 'irc.debian.org' alias, it's probably fair to
say that the channels are official, too; but as an immediate medium, its
usefulness for important bits of information is limited.

Web forums are useful to a particular subset of Debian users that I do
not consider myself to be part of. I think we should continue to provide
them if we can fix the issues we seem to be having with them currently,
though I do not have good suggestions on how to do that.

External media of course aren't something Debian has an influence over,
and that's a good thing.

 Do you feel any of these media have been misused by Debian people
 (DDs/non-DDs alike)? If so, what action would you take if you become
 DPL?

No. Occasionally, announcements have been made over the wrong channel
that should instead have been made to debian-devel-announce; but when
challenged on that, people usually submit them to the right forum.

 Do you feel the general tone and perception of Debian is positive on
 the media that you follow? What action would you take to improve these
 if you become DPL?

This differs from medium to medium.

I have some more details on what I plan to do in my platform; if you
have some more questions on that after it has been published, I would be
happy to answer them.

-- 
The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters
works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is
trying to fool the system.
  http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html


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Re: Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-14 Thread Margarita Manterola
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Paul Wise p...@debian.org wrote:

 Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you
 follow? and contribute to? As well as a general list I'm interested in
 specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-de...@l.d.o,
 debian-proj...@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc).

I generally follow quite a number of lists in Debian, -project,
-devel, -boot, -release, -women, -vote, -mentors, -newmaint, -policy,
-qa, -announce, -devel-announce.  I don't always read all the mails in
the lists, obviously, but I try to keep up with anything important
that is going on.  I'm usually in #debian-devel, #debian-release,
#debian-women, #debian-ar and #debconf-team. I also read Planet
Debian, I have a blog there but it's currently underused.

I'm also subscribed to the -bugs-dist list, although I use it mostly
for searching bugs and related mails.

I don't twitter, and I don't usually read any microblogs, nor do I use
facebook.  I don't plan to change this.

 How do you see those two lists changing if you become DPL?

I do plan to blog more, as well as post Bits from the DPL on -devel-announce.

 Which of these communications media do you feel is important for the
 DPL to read?

I think that it's important that the DPL keeps up with what's going on
in Debian, but it's not possible to read all the Debian lists.  That's
one of the things that I miss the most about DWN: it allowed us to be
updated on anything interesting happening on the mailing lists,
without having to read all of them.  In any case, -devel and -project
are obviously a must. For the rest, I think that anything important
that requires the DPL attention would be CC'd or forwarded to
lea...@d.o.

I've been told that a lot of the DPL's time is spent reading /
replying to lea...@d.o mails.  I've been thinking about this and
pondering whether it would be a good idea to try to direct more of
those mails to RT instead of the leader's inbox, so that DDs can keep
track of what's being done about their requests, as long as they are
not private, of course.

 Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some
 of these media.

I'm not sure of what's being asked here. Which of the mentioned media
are these media here?  Because obviously it's not the same
relationship with official Debian lists than with microblogging
services.

 Do you feel any of these media have been misused by Debian people
 (DDs/non-DDs alike)? If so, what action would you take if you become
 DPL?

Again, I'm not sure which are these media in this case.  In any
case, apart from the aggression level discussed in another answer, I
don't think there's a level of misuse that we should worry about.

 Do you feel the general tone and perception of Debian is positive on
 the media that you follow? What action would you take to improve these
 if you become DPL?

For a lot of people outside Debian, Debian is seen as difficult from
the user point of view, and aggressive from the to-be-contributor
point of view.  I do plan to take action on both of this aspects if I
become DPL.  By doing a campaign with the message that Debian is not
harder than other GNU/Linux distributions, and by doing events as the
one commented on another answer for encouraging contributions.

-- 
Besos,
Marga


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Re: Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-14 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli
[ You've just won my prize for the most unexpected -vote question. ]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 10:17:06AM +0700, Paul Wise wrote:
 Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you
 follow? and contribute to? As well as a general list I'm interested in
 specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-de...@l.d.o,
 debian-proj...@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc).

what_zack_follows

So, let's skip the lists specific to tech topics, as most of us I follow
one of them for each of my Debian technical activity and/or packaging
team (e.g. -ocaml-maint, -python, -devscripts [on alioth], etc.)
Regarding lists about the project as a whole I follow daily -devel,
-project, -vote (especially these days :-)), -newmaint, -qa, -private. I
contribute regularly to most of them.

To stay informed with what goes on in the project I follow planet.d.o,
Debian News (which has de facto resurrected DWN, an amazing
achievement!), various announcements ML (d-d-a, -events-eu), and a bunch
of Debian folks on identi.ca.  I post on planet.d.o quite regularly, I'd
say about once per week on average. Recently I've started microblogging
on identi.ca. Finally, I'm on a couple of cross-distro mailing lists
which I found amazing to advertise some of our worth sharing initiatives
(e.g. pushing for our Patch Tagging Guidelines on the
distribut...@freedesktop ML).

On IRC I basically mimic the MLs I follow: #-devel, #-qa, #-python,
#-newmaint, etc. However, I'm mostly idle on IRC and tend to get
activated only by explicit queries or needs of mine.

I don't follow any Debian forum and I'm not on any user support IRC
channel.

/what_zack_follows

 How do you see those two lists changing if you become DPL?

As I declared in my platform last year, if elected I intend to step back
from my other Debian activities (which in most case already have
efficient teams even without me). Consequently, I'll decrease my
activities in the corresponding tech communication channels (ML/IRC).

Regarding project-wide ML, I'm already following most of them, but I
believe it would be important to participate in lists which concern our
communication (e.g. a bit more of -events* list, -publicity, and the
like).

 Which of these communications media do you feel is important for the
 DPL to read?

All lists which are somehow project-wide should be followed by the DPL.

With infinite time available, the DPL should also follow all other
lists, but that's clearly impossible. To close the gap between that
optimum and reality, if elected I will be clear about what I regularly
follow and on what, OTOH, I will welcome explicit pings on DPL-relevant
threads (ideally, all the rest).

 Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some
 of these media.

Not sure what you're asking here ..., can you be more precise?

 Do you feel any of these media have been misused by Debian people
 (DDs/non-DDs alike)? If so, what action would you take if you become
 DPL?

I don't think countering media abuse is something the DPL should do.
While I'm not sure what is the status for our IRC channels, for mailing
list we have list masters that in case of abuses can already apply
standard countermeasures such as per-person moderation.

I notice however that in most cases, what contributes to make not fun
following some of our medias does not really qualify as abuse. It is
rather a matter of good habits among co-workers and a culture of mutual
respect. We have a separate question on this topic already, I'll
elaborate on the subject there.

 Do you feel the general tone and perception of Debian is positive on
 the media that you follow? What action would you take to improve these
 if you become DPL?

In the above, we've mostly discussed internal communication media, so
the perception of Debian is generally positive as participants _are_
Debian. The needed improvements fallback again to the heated
discussion thread.

The few exceptions to internal communication I've mentioned are the
cross-distro mailing lists. There (to be exact I've in mind the vcs-pkg
and the dis...@freedesktop lists) the climate among all participants
have always been respectful and I don't have specific reasons to believe
the perception of Debian is not positive.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime


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Re: Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-14 Thread Paul Wise
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 11:27 PM, Margarita Manterola
margamanter...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Paul Wise p...@debian.org wrote:
 Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some
 of these media.

 I'm not sure of what's being asked here. Which of the mentioned media
 are these media here?  Because obviously it's not the same
 relationship with official Debian lists than with microblogging
 services.

 Do you feel any of these media have been misused by Debian people
 (DDs/non-DDs alike)? If so, what action would you take if you become
 DPL?

 Again, I'm not sure which are these media in this case.  In any
 case, apart from the aggression level discussed in another answer, I
 don't think there's a level of misuse that we should worry about.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. By these media I meant the
Debian related communications media that you are following currently
or will follow if you become DPL.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-14 Thread Paul Wise
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 4:56 AM, Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org wrote:

 [ You've just won my prize for the most unexpected -vote question. ]

Thanks, I think :)

 On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 10:17:06AM +0700, Paul Wise wrote:
 Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some
 of these media.

 Not sure what you're asking here ..., can you be more precise?

Hmm, not sure what I was thinking of when I wrote that. The
Thailand-induced hangover isn't helping either :) I'll update the
thread if I think of something.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Question to all the candidates: communication

2010-03-13 Thread Paul Wise
Dear candidates,

Debian has a lot of project communications media; lists, forums, IRC,
planet, bts, RT. There are also a lot of external communications media
covering Debian; news media, , social networks, blogs, microblogging
sites  non-IRC chat, video sites and so on.

Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you
follow? and contribute to? As well as a general list I'm interested in
specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-de...@l.d.o,
debian-proj...@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc).

How do you see those two lists changing if you become DPL?

Which of these communications media do you feel is important for the
DPL to read?

Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some
of these media.

Do you feel any of these media have been misused by Debian people
(DDs/non-DDs alike)? If so, what action would you take if you become
DPL?

Do you feel the general tone and perception of Debian is positive on
the media that you follow? What action would you take to improve these
if you become DPL?

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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