Fedora Weekly News #155

[Oisin Feeley]

On Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:55:01 +0100, "Thorsten Leemhuis"

> I wanted to put it in proper words, but I didn't get around to it, so 
> maybe I'll do it just quickly here:

It's really appreciated that you took the time to give some feedback
Thorsten.
 
> I like the FWN in general. But I noticed I often do not read them. They 
> for me are to long and contain way to many details -- the section "The 
> PATH to CAPP Audits" and "The Looming Py3K Monster" for example contain 
> a lot of information (which were hard work to collect), 

I've frequently wondered about that.  Does anyone else agree that it's
too long? One problem with making things much shorter is that we can
either produce what is essentially a simple list of topics, i.e.

=== CAPP Certification Requirements Cause Unease ===

Changes made in 2005 to the permissions of shadow-utils tools in order
to achieve CAPP certification were called[1] into question. It seems
that they may complicate many of what are claimed to be the common use
cases of Fedora. Steve Grubb, the shadow-utils maintainer, defended the
permissions and explained CAPP certification.

[1] Link to start of thread.

> but if I want 
> that in-depth details I'll go and read the thread on the list directly.

Why wouldn't you just go and skim the archives directly then?  It's easy
enough to see what might be the interesting threads.
 
> I think a little bit less (1/3 or 1/4 the length of what it is now) 
> could me more/better here.

1/3 or 1/4 would actually be a hell of a lot more work.  The choices are
either: 1) short, nearly content-free summaries which essentially
mention the thread and nothing else, or 2)an attempt to provide an
unpredjudiced digest.

Writing something in between would take a much greater amount of time
and probably give rise to a lot more complaints about bias.

> 
> And all those links in the text with sections like
> ----
> > [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00420.html
> > 
> > [2] http://libvirt.org/remote.html
> > 
> > [3] http://www.avahi.org 
> ----
> IMHO make it really hard to read.

I would prefer all the links at the bottom of each item.  Would that be
better or do you just not want to see links except at the end like an
attached bibliography?

> 
> The OpenSUSE weekly news
> http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/49
> look much more professional,

For what value of "professional"? To me, like the Ubuntu Weekly News and
other distro news I'm not bothered to read them because they're just a
collection of links to blog posts.  


> are likely a whole less work and they even 
> get them translated because they are shorter/focus on the more important 
> things.

"More important" than what? My impression is that you'd prefer it if
there were no "Developments" or "Virtualization" sections and simply a
list of what gets posted to @fedora-announce and some entries from
Planet.  

> Just my 2 cent as seldom reader. I thought you guys maybe wanted to 
> know. And don't let my option confuse you to much. Maybe it's just me.

Specifics would be useful (like the comment about the links), otherwise
I'm just left with the disappointed feeling that you don't like FWN.  

Thanks again for the feedback though and it would be nice if you could
spare more time to deepen the critique.
-- 
  Oisin Feeley
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley