Re: Community News Window Pane

[Carnë Draug]

On 11 November 2013 19:41, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 11/11/2013 01:49 PM, Carnë Draug wrote:
>>
>> On 6 November 2013 14:50, Daniel J Sebald<address@hidden>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Here is something that I'm just aware of with the new build--Community
>>> News
>>> window, a noticeable feature added so close to a release.  For multiple
>>> reasons, could we get rid of the Community News?
>>>
>>> 1) It really clutters the space upon first impression.  There is a good
>>> balance to strike with information content, and it is easy to be too busy
>>> with too many window panes.
>>
>>
>> I don't think anyone will actually keep that window open. It is meant
>> to just deliver news which are likely not super frequent. But to make
>> this more obvious, is it possible to set it as undocked/floating by
>> default?
>
>
> Yes, I've been thinking about doing that, and only showing it
> periodically when Octave starts.  Perhaps at most once per week, or
> only if there is new news to display since the last time the news was
> shown.

I think "if there is new news to display since the last time" a
reasonable thing. Having the community news as dockable, possibly part
of the editor does not seem very useful. Is it possible to just remove
it from the windows section and have it just as pop up window like it
happens for the release notes?

>>> 2) This comment makes one cringe:
>>>
>>> "This window will be used to inform you about Octave community events.
>>> Octave may show it to you even if you've chosen hide the window by
>>> default.
>>> We'll try not to bother you too much, but we do want to keep you up to
>>> date
>>> with the latest information about important bug fixes, new releases, or
>>> any
>>> other news that all Octave users should be aware of.
>>> — The Octave Developers, October 8, 2013"
>>>
>>> "This window will be used to"
>>> Instead of providing actual community news, it tells one what it will be
>>> used for in the future.  Can we add thirty different features like that,
>>> with just an explanation of what's to come?
>>
>>
>> This window does not say anything really. It just shows what's on [1]
>
>
> That particular text was just meant as an example.
>
>>> "latest information about important bug fixes"
>>> Admitting Octave is full of bugs.
>>
>>
>> I agree this can be worded differently. Luckily it's just a matter of
>> changing things in our side. In special, the part about "Octave may
>> show it to you even if you've chosen hide the window" which really
>> sounds like whatever your preferences and settings are, we will do
>> what we think is better.
>
> I don't see anything wrong with popping the window up occasionally if
> there is info that all users should have.

I don't see that as a problem. The problem for me is that we are
saying that even if the user choose to not see the window, we will
show it to him anyway. But I think now it is just misunderstanding. I
read "even if you've chosen to hide the window" as "even if you
disable receiving news, we will show them to you anyway", but you
actually meant "don't worry about closing the window, we will show it
again when there's new news".

It comes to my mind now Java and Adobe which usually have a bad
reputation as being annoying as hell popping up stuff for updates.

>>> 3) Who is going to maintain this community news?  We've had this
>>> discussion
>>> at OctConf's about just exactly how much we can keep even developers
>>> up-to-date on things.  There are probably full-time software people at
>>> bigger companies who maintain community news types of things.  Octave
>>> doesn't have that resource bandwidth.
>>
>> We already have planet octave[2]. It may be a good idea to define what
>> is community news. I'd guess it's something more specialized than what
>> is currently in planet Octave (and even more than what is currently
>> Octave's facebook and Google+). So what about having planet Octave
>> syndicate this Octave core/team news?
>
> I want the Octave core developers to be responsible for this news
> page.  I don't want it to be random blog posts.

Yes. So what about making them a RSS feed and make it appear on planet
Octave along side the other random blog posts? The real Octave core
news are missing from planet Octave.

>> On a related note, what if instead of having a static page, it's a
>> actually a script that takes the octave version possibly showing a
>> different page? In the mean time we can have it always showing the
>> same thing but if in the future we want to specialize... It will also
>> give us an idea of the distribution of different Octave versions going
>> around.
>
> Yes, there are lots of things we could do with this, but apparently
> some people are freaking out about having Octave display some info
> from a static web page.  I suppose they'll really go ballistic if we
> have Octave start sending information about Octave TO a web site.

Can't we do it like Debian and have a preferences for disabling the
sending of that information? They will get a standard instead of
targeted news if they chose to not send them. This could go together
with the option to not get any news ever.

> Seriously though, I just want us to be able to connect with our users,
> give them useful information, and occasionally ask them to help use in
> some way.  Those requests might be to ask them to participate in a
> survey about what direction future development should take, or they
> might be requests for donations.

For us that is very obvious, we are the good guys in our minds. But
pop up windows and requests to update can be a nuisance and build a
bad reputation, even when we had the best of intentions.

Carnë