On Sun, 2011-07-10 at 00:07 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote: > this list isnt the announement list for anything. if after folowing this > list for a while, people are still unsure as to the qaweb interface - > then nothing is really going to come across to them. Actually, I would say that the name of this list is kind of misleading as such (centos-devel@), because it is not something one would expect from a list that ends with -devel at . To my mind it is more like CentOS development public outreach list, that is a list that many developers follow and periodically ask for input (or even receive unsolicited input :-) ), but it is definitively not a conventional internal development mailing list where ongoing issues are discussed mostly within the developers themselves. I think this is where the confusion comes from. Maybe if it were made more clear on the wiki [1] and on the mailman list description page [2], it would really help. [1]: http://wiki.centos.org/GettingHelp/ListInfo [2]: http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel > > 2) A short message on the Twitter, which many are using as an RSS feed > > for the project news for the lack of better options. > > there is a statement on twitter about this.. True, posted on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:31:55 UTC and not particularly clear to laymen as it seemed to me (see below). > >> What did you find when you looked there ? > > 1) Your reply on the mailing list made perfect sense and was generally > > an example of good communication, but it came late. > > 2) So did the tweet. > > not sure I understand - are you saying that we should try and pre-empt > every possible way that people out there might need hand holding ? that > sounds quite strange. An issue came up, we tried to address it. No, of course not, since this would indeed sound quite strange. All I am saying is that the leak issue came up at latest around Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 UTC. Soon enough started the speculations on why this is an issue at all and how come greedy CentOS developers don't want to share their stuff etc. Your (helpful!) answer came (technically) a day later. This is a totally reasonable response time under normal circumstances, but I don't think this is the case here. For instance, a major Russian FOSS portal has already published a news item that CentOS 6 was publicly released and provided links to one of the leaking mirrors (which is still up and serving, by the way [3]). Of course inspired visitors already created torrents to seed the files as genuine CentOS 6 stuff and I bet many thousands of downloads already took place by that time... [3]: http://centos.mirror.nexicom.net/6.0/isos/x86_64/ > > As on many other instances, I would expect this information to be > > provided earlier. > > so you mean to tell me that you are confused about the 'its not released > till its released and announced released bit?' Yes, exactly, that's what I'm telling you. To my mind it would be of help, if this message was (1) posted earlier and (2) looked more like "Attention! The CentOS 6 ISOs on the mirrors right now might not have the final content yet! Please wait until the release is officially announced to avoid unpleasant surprises and report leaking mirrors." Would you agree with that? > > I have previously asked on this list if the batches of the relevant > > qaweb announcements can be communicated on the -devel list weekly, e.g. > > every Friday. > > this is not a communication of things to people list, I for one would > really not want it to become something of that nature. Totally fine with me, it's a CentOS list, so CentOS sets the policy on what kind of information should and shouldn't be posted. How about the announcement or newsletter list? What do you think? > > I could have taken the role of a person that would compile relevant > > updates from qaweb and officially post them to the list if this would be > > dont think you can -- most of our interactino is on irc, and you have > previously yourself said that you are not available online there much.. I do realize that, that's why I didn't offer myself in the first place (1) and called it (2) "compiled from qaweb", since I am unable to follow the IRC conversations (even this would be of help, I think). Which brings us back to another question that I asked, that is what kind of help you need with communication and how you could make use of it? Internal communication mostly happens on IRC? Fine, how about making a call for someone that is interested to follow the IRC and make regular overviews posted to the rest of the communication channels (lists, forums and twitter)? Hey, remember the story with the unofficial CentOS-6 twitter account? I think it's an indication that this area would benefit from improvement... -- Sincerely yours, Yury V. Zaytsev