what should go into the website news? (was: announcing things like ...)

[Janek Warchoł]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Graham Percival
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 09:33:03PM +0200, Janek Warchoł wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:54 PM, Graham Percival
>> <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Well then, let's have some important project news posted. I'll write a
>> note about GSoC,
>
> yes.

Done.  Wow, i'm mentioned on the front page - 2 times!  Awesome!

>> and i think we can make an announcement when Mike&Joe
>> finish new skylines - that's a fairly important project news.
>
> No.  Information like that goes into the Changes document.

You are the project administrator, so the decision is yours.  However,
please consider that many software projects highlight the most
important changes - to bring visitors' interest and to inform them
better about the software.
Personally, i find the Changes document a sort of emergency checklist:
when something doesn't work in a new release, i search it to see if it
was a deliberate change and what to do with it.  It's just too long to
be an interesting lecture, and when i read it, i find that most of the
entries are irrelevant to me.  I cannot see how this could be of much
interest to average user, let alone a casual visitor (whom we want to
invite to LilyPond, that's one of the most important goals of the
website).

>> Another example: a new edition (created using LilyPond) of some
>> significant work is released (for example something similar to Open
>> Goldberg Variations) - i'd say that it's important news for the
>> project itself.
>
> I don't agree.

ok, hopefully editions professionally published with LilyPond will
become so commonplace that they won't be important at all.  But if
(hopefully /when/) we launch our own Kickstarter, i'd say that'd be
relevant and important to the LilyPond project itself.

>> > I think it needs to come from people other than the main
>> > developers, though.  We're all too burnt out and overworked to get
>> > enthusiastic about something like this.
>>
>> Maybe.
>> As for the news, i suggest a following solution: when someone feels
>> like posting some news, he puts the note up for review, which will
>> work mostly as a vote (whether to post it or not).
>
> That means that only git people can submit news items?

It looks that currently you have to be Graham to submit news ;) or at
least have his blessing ;)  Being a 'git human' is way easier :)
Seriously, though, i just wanted to remind us that it's not only
Graham who can write news.  It'd be nice to have more than Lily/Report
release news on the website, but we cannot require you to be our
reporter in addition to being administrator - so, let's join our
efforts.

> If you really really want to have fluff pieces on the main
> lilypond website, I could imagine us using the top right-hand
> corner (Mike's "wasted space") for twitter-like announcements of
> concerts and editions.

+1
it would show not only that our project is alive (release news do
that) and usable (productions show that), but also that it's /active/
and /useful/, not just an academic invention of some nerds.


On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 12:00 PM, address@hidden
<address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm a fan!  I think the no-man's-land @ the top right can be used for all
> sorts of announcements no longer than a tweet: new LilyPond reports,
> concert, tours, engraving projects, etc..  It can be a rotating thing so
> that every time someone signs on, something different pops up.

+1

cheers,
Janek