On Ubuntu community news
Community communications are essential. So are community news. A source of news (both technical and general public) is great when you want to keep in touch with the Ubuntu world, without having to digg around in IRC logs, mailing lists, external blog posts, forum posts,…Ok, So what do we have right now?
- The Ubuntu Fridge. Great source of various news for the general public, non-technical audience. Unfortunately, it has a bad visibility and it is not read much (based on this small poll (30 answers, 37% not aware of the Fridge, 55% not reading it, 7% reading once in a while), the fact that it is only linked from ubuntu.com,and the number of reference to the fridge I’m seeing)
- Planet Ubuntu. Source of very various things, mainly technical. Solid pieces of technical Ubuntu news are rare, and the nature of the planet needs one to read it regularly, since history after 4 days is lost.
- Ubuntu team external news (I’m not talking about intra-team news) are quite non-existent. If some exists, their visibility is so bad that I’m not aware of them. The QA and Server team have set up a news blog, but only aggregaged to the technical Planet.
The situation is not optimal. Okay, now what’s the point? I mean, for us developers and regular contributors, all is ok, we don’t see the need of more news. Yes, for people heavily involved, there is not really a need for news. But for occasional contributors, people that spend only a few hours per week due to work and others duties, the time is precious. The need has already be made known on the ubuntu-devel ML. A good source of news for the general public should also not be neglected. It would make a better visibility for teams needs (e.g. QA call for testing, 5-a-day,…), it would avoid damaging rumors (Ubuntu killing harddrive, black theme going to be default, …), it would give feedback to users expressing their wishes on Ubuntu Brainstorm, …
In my opinion, how community news could be optimally organized:
- The Ubuntu Fridge gets a much broader visibility with an inter-community-websites navigation, which is really needed for the Ubuntu websites on the overall. The Fridge get a subsection for each Ubuntu Team, so that general-public news of Ubuntu teams can be published without having the team to host their own blog/other source of news.Optionally the Fridge get renammed to something less confusing, e.g. news.ubuntu.com. This setup is clearly focused on the general public and potential contributors audience.
- A similar setup is created, but for technical news : a blog where only technical news are posted, and with subcategories for each Ubuntu teams to let them post their news. This setup is clearly focused on the developers, power users and experienced contributers audience.
And no question of merging these two sources of news.
What’s your opinion? Thoughts?
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Comments
Comment from Wouter
Time: November 30, 2008, 3:31 pm
It would be great if the fridge would get more posts and increased visibility. I used to spend a lot of time on ubuntu and indeed then you don’t need much news, but these days I don’t have so much time and it is hard to get a view on what is going on within the ubuntu community and development.
Comment from Myrtti
Time: November 30, 2008, 4:52 pm
What I’d like to see is a way to subscribe to the diff of opml.xml. I prefer to subscribe to the blog feeds themselves so I’m not restricted by the rss of the planet, but this is a bit cumbersome way of doing things since the roster in planet changes constantly and I have to somehow check the changes on it. This is of course a technical note and I should address this to the developers of PlanetPlanet…
Comment from boredandblogging
Time: November 30, 2008, 6:02 pm
I put up a related idea in brainstorm a while ago: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13577/.
We have been trying to get more content up on the Fridge and it is easier for everyone to contribute since it is more integrated with LP.
The -devel ML thread got mentioned on the -news-team list, and I provided my feelings: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2008-November/000293.html
I’m all for having technical news on the Fridge. If we are to go this way, it would be good if the developer news was explained more thoroughly, with links and definitions. This would definitely require more work, but it would also make it more accessible to Ubuntu users who might be interested in getting involved in the technical aspects. Think of the Fridge not only a news portal, but a potential recruiting mechanism.
Comment from MadsRH
Time: November 30, 2008, 8:00 pm
Wow, a blog where only technical news are posted, and with subcategories for each Ubuntu teams to let them post their news, sounds just awesome to me - I would love to see that! I really find it annoying when there’s a post about someones dog getting five puppy’s (or something like that) on the planet.
Comment from Matthew East
Time: November 30, 2008, 8:06 pm
The Fridge is already pretty open to increasing the amount of news going through it - but it lacks manpower - if you’re interested in contributing, hop over to:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fridge
On team reports, most Ubuntu teams are already posting their news on a monthly basis to this resource:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports
Significant team news is already incorporated into the Ubuntu Weekly News. Hopefully we’ll see more team reports on the Fridge in due course.
Comment from Tormod
Time: November 30, 2008, 8:24 pm
“The Ubuntu Fridge. Great source”: heh, I think you mean “potentially great” - there’s hardly anything else than the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter there. Which is the fault of all of us of course.
Comment from Yann
Time: December 1, 2008, 10:40 am
I think a website for locos would be great. How many locos have a hard time finding what they want: how to handle DNS, bots, channels, hosting, … news would be just great there too. And it could have a gallery section 
Comment from nand
Time: December 1, 2008, 12:58 pm
@ boredandblogging: We’re on the same wavelength, interesting discussion ahead at the UDS!
@MadsRH: My feeling too… Planet is a little too… noisy sometimes! I’m not against the Planet, on the opposite, I like reading some personal stuff! But the planet is definitely not the best model for getting dev news.
@Matthew East : Team reports are nice, but not always enough. A call for testing, a bugjam or similar ponctual news, hidden in a monthly team report at the end of the weekly newsletter would not draw much attention. There is really the need for more visibility for Team news.
@Yann: Loco news? Gallery? Interesting!
Comment from Daniel Robitaille
Time: November 30, 2008, 3:24 pm
And the controversy on the name of the Fridge still goes on, years after its birth
I remember trying to come up with alternate names very early in the Fridge development, but nothing stuck on in my mind as better than Fridge, which I believed Jeff Waugh came up with.
And there is already some sort of “news.ubuntu.com”…at the url http://www.ubuntu.com/news
But the difference between that page and the Fridge is obvious: corporate news vs community news. But different sites (u.c/news vs fridge vs planet) still lead to a fragmentation of news in the community: not good.