OSNews Does It Again
Yet again, OS News has taken a simple post to a mailing list and turned it into a full article, complete with corporate overtones and stating that it's a final decision.
I'm starting to re-adjust my belief that OS News is slightly better than Slashdot...
NP: Hot Shots II, The Beta Band
Posted by KMan at Tue Mar 1 10:02:53 2005:
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 10:13:03 2005:
The article has been updated for hours, actually.
Thing is, with open source, you don't need a press release to get some news, mailing list posts is what usually are used for this kind of communication and IMHO, Seth's first email was clear that this was a decision (or at least an 'acting decision'). So, why be mean and say that "osnews does it again"? This is really not accurate either you know.
Posted by Ross at Tue Mar 1 10:19:38 2005:
Thing is, with open source, you don't need a press release to get some news, mailing list posts is what usually are used for this kind of communication and IMHO, Seth's first email was clear that this was a decision (or at least an 'acting decision'). So, why be mean and say that "osnews does it again"? This is really not accurate either you know.
This has all been discussed on this list, but the post from Diana and Seth clearly stated that Clearlooks is just one of the contenders. It may be the current leader, but as we haven't even got G2.10 out of the door yet I expect several other alternatives to appear. They are also working for as GNOME contributers and not Red Hat employees in this case.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 10:23:45 2005:
Maybe so (IMHO, Seth's email was more in the line of "this is going to be the default"), but the article was updated, hours ago anyway.
Posted by guest at Tue Mar 1 10:53:10 2005:
isn't that good enough?
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-February/msg00458.html
i can rarely see such a strong desicions in gnome lists :)
Posted by J at Tue Mar 1 11:28:19 2005:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-February/msg00458.html
i can rarely see such a strong desicions in gnome lists :)
"OS News is slightly better than Slashdot"
Come on Ross. At least on Slashdot, your posts are not deleted if you disagree with the whims of the editor.
Eugenia must think she's some sort of Cleopatra with all the sycophants posting on her site. It's nauseating as there are hardly any contradictory comments or detractions. The only reason I have the feed in Liferea is to remind me of what journalistic integrity isn't.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 11:47:45 2005:
Come on Ross. At least on Slashdot, your posts are not deleted if you disagree with the whims of the editor.
Eugenia must think she's some sort of Cleopatra with all the sycophants posting on her site. It's nauseating as there are hardly any contradictory comments or detractions. The only reason I have the feed in Liferea is to remind me of what journalistic integrity isn't.
J, posts don't get deleted on OSNews (usually). Posts do get moderated down though and they will continue to do so. Just like on any other site that doesn't have a use for crappers, OSNews doesn't either.
Besides, I am not the moderator at osnews (at least not on a regular basis). The owner, David Adams, is so take it up with him and don't mention my name in such disrespectful way if you don't have all the facts at hand.
As for journalistic integrity, we do the damn best work we can. Nobody is a trained "journalist" there and NO ONE is getting paid, we are a bunch of people with love for technology and that's that. OSNews is one big blog-style news site, it's not CNN or News.com and it will never be. As I said, nobody gets paid there (the ads barely pay for the ever increasing bandwidth usage).
And if you think you can do better, be my guest, start your own news site and try to bring it from 700 pageviews per day to 270,000, like I have done (and be second only to slashdot for this kind of "alternative OS" news site). That's not to blow my own horn, but it's an undeniable fact.
I worked hard for osnews (and gnomefiles), and no matter what you think, it's doing great on all aspects considering our original goals for the site.
Posted by CraHan at Tue Mar 1 12:48:57 2005:
Besides, I am not the moderator at osnews (at least not on a regular basis). The owner, David Adams, is so take it up with him and don't mention my name in such disrespectful way if you don't have all the facts at hand.
As for journalistic integrity, we do the damn best work we can. Nobody is a trained "journalist" there and NO ONE is getting paid, we are a bunch of people with love for technology and that's that. OSNews is one big blog-style news site, it's not CNN or News.com and it will never be. As I said, nobody gets paid there (the ads barely pay for the ever increasing bandwidth usage).
And if you think you can do better, be my guest, start your own news site and try to bring it from 700 pageviews per day to 270,000, like I have done (and be second only to slashdot for this kind of "alternative OS" news site). That's not to blow my own horn, but it's an undeniable fact.
I worked hard for osnews (and gnomefiles), and no matter what you think, it's doing great on all aspects considering our original goals for the site.
Eugenia: on sites like slashdot, the moderation is done by peers, not by editors alone. What bugged me most of all was not only the fact that you decided to portray a theme candidate as the actual choice, but more the fact that you had to put yourself forward in the article as the usability person on that theme. Would you have posted about it when you weren't a part of it all?
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 12:55:00 2005:
Well, I DID work on the usability of the theme. I DID SPEND A FEW HOURS creating mockups and test cases before I send them for review to Richard. In fact, Richard HAS fixed most of the points I made to him (I sent him about 14 mockups/changes in the period of 2 weeks). In the first few emails to him, Seth Nickell was also CC'ed btw.
So WTF do you feel annoyed by the fact that I had something to do with the theme? I did some work on it just like others did. The main work on the theme is done by Richard and Daniel. But others helped out as well, and you know, my time does worth something. I didn't spend all that time just to get a jerk like you who doesn't have a clue what's up, to tell me that I didn't work on the usability of the theme, 'cause I did.
Posted by robert at Tue Mar 1 12:56:41 2005:
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 13:02:24 2005:
So WTF do you feel annoyed by the fact that I had something to do with the theme? I did some work on it just like others did. The main work on the theme is done by Richard and Daniel. But others helped out as well, and you know, my time does worth something. I didn't spend all that time just to get a jerk like you who doesn't have a clue what's up, to tell me that I didn't work on the usability of the theme, 'cause I did.
Here is yet another know-it-all reader who doesn't understand crap. OSNews is the BIGGEST CRITIC of BeOS' today. BeOS is outdated, BeOS is dead. I really don't know why people think that OSNews protects BeOS/Zeta/Haiku's balls, because we aren't.
It's really funny to see all these people having the completely wrong impression of OSNews. People are so easy to critisize or simply misunderstand things instead of taking a step back and actually think for a moment of how it would be like if they were in our position.
Then, I would laugh with you.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 13:13:58 2005:
It's really funny to see all these people having the completely wrong impression of OSNews. People are so easy to critisize or simply misunderstand things instead of taking a step back and actually think for a moment of how it would be like if they were in our position.
Then, I would laugh with you.
> Eugenia: on sites like slashdot,
>the moderation is done by peers,
>not by editors alone.
That would be ideal, but it is not possible because osnews' engine does not support registered users. It's all anonymous. There was an effort a few months ago to develop one such system, but I don't think the developer who started it ever completed it. And so David does most of the moderating (with some help of 5-6 more moderators who have admin access on our backend).
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 13:29:00 2005:
>the moderation is done by peers,
>not by editors alone.
That would be ideal, but it is not possible because osnews' engine does not support registered users. It's all anonymous. There was an effort a few months ago to develop one such system, but I don't think the developer who started it ever completed it. And so David does most of the moderating (with some help of 5-6 more moderators who have admin access on our backend).
And continuing on this: no, we can't change our CMS to another engine because we want to use our own for multiple reasons, most important being:
1. recognisability (osnews has a certain look)
2. would be difficult to move our 9,000 articles over to another CMS without problems.
3. most importantly: best-support-ever for PDAs and mobile phones. OSNews has one of the best implementations for HTML support for mobile devices on the web. Users don't need to enter special URLs to get to a half-a$$ed mobile page. The whole osnews content is as accessible to these devices as it is for desktop browsers, with appropriate page design for these devices. OSNews even renders great on TV browsers (we have a few readers visiting us with WebTV every evening, according to my mobile logs). We have 2,000+ hits daily from such mobile/embedded users that I definetely don't want to lose because it's a kind of service that you don't find elsewhere (not even counting the WAP users).
As I said above, I have worked hard for OSNews. And so forgive me if I sound angrevating or anything, but I don't take crap for it.
Every little thing that was said here today from people, they all had the wrong impression of the site or me or how we work. I hope I helped with my replies to clear up a few things.
Posted by J at Tue Mar 1 13:37:18 2005:
1. recognisability (osnews has a certain look)
2. would be difficult to move our 9,000 articles over to another CMS without problems.
3. most importantly: best-support-ever for PDAs and mobile phones. OSNews has one of the best implementations for HTML support for mobile devices on the web. Users don't need to enter special URLs to get to a half-a$$ed mobile page. The whole osnews content is as accessible to these devices as it is for desktop browsers, with appropriate page design for these devices. OSNews even renders great on TV browsers (we have a few readers visiting us with WebTV every evening, according to my mobile logs). We have 2,000+ hits daily from such mobile/embedded users that I definetely don't want to lose because it's a kind of service that you don't find elsewhere (not even counting the WAP users).
As I said above, I have worked hard for OSNews. And so forgive me if I sound angrevating or anything, but I don't take crap for it.
Every little thing that was said here today from people, they all had the wrong impression of the site or me or how we work. I hope I helped with my replies to clear up a few things.
Nice gutter talk there, Eugenia.
As for deleting posts, you do. I seem to recall criticising your husband once and got my post deleted for it.
"Nobody is a trained "journalist" there" - You don't need to be a journalist to have integrity.
"and NO ONE is getting paid" - okay
Posted by Ross at Tue Mar 1 13:38:04 2005:
Posted by Danielle Meyer at Tue Mar 1 13:44:07 2005:
As for deleting posts, you do. I seem to recall criticising your husband once and got my post deleted for it.
"Nobody is a trained "journalist" there" - You don't need to be a journalist to have integrity.
"and NO ONE is getting paid" - okay
If everyone has the wrong end of the stick, as regards to OSNews, then perhaps you're doing something wrong in order to give them that opinion.
Noone I know holds OSNews in high regard. This includes LFS and Gentoo users, who really thing that -O999999 makes their laptop faster.
Posted by Mikael Hallendal at Tue Mar 1 13:46:05 2005:
Noone I know holds OSNews in high regard. This includes LFS and Gentoo users, who really thing that -O999999 makes their laptop faster.
Eugenia, number of page hits aren't really equal to integrity and correctness of articles. I think OSNews serves a purpose but I think it's important to stay to facts and making sure that things are correct before posting them there (even more so when it's popular) and not go for sensational journalism (or however you call it in english, tabloid like).
Take the extra time to come into to #gnome-hackers and ask whether it's actually true before posting it there. Would at least make people in the GNOME camp happier.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 13:46:48 2005:
Take the extra time to come into to #gnome-hackers and ask whether it's actually true before posting it there. Would at least make people in the GNOME camp happier.
>I seem to recall criticising your husband once and got my post deleted for it.
I don't take crap about my husband or my family. Period.
If a post is really ugly, it will ultimately get deleted (it IS written in our forum rules clearly). But 99% of the moderated posts only get moderated, they don't get deleted.
>You don't need to be a journalist to have integrity.
As I said, we do the best we can. If you think you can do better, go ahead and do your own site, or even join us and shows us the light. There are 6 editors who have joined us. At one point there were 14. But thing is, they join, and then they don't participate, except maybe Adam Scheinberg (trust me, I DO want people to help me out). Most people are like that, they relax out after joining in. I am not. I have a passion for what I do, and that's why OSNews has become so successful.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 13:58:29 2005:
I don't take crap about my husband or my family. Period.
If a post is really ugly, it will ultimately get deleted (it IS written in our forum rules clearly). But 99% of the moderated posts only get moderated, they don't get deleted.
>You don't need to be a journalist to have integrity.
As I said, we do the best we can. If you think you can do better, go ahead and do your own site, or even join us and shows us the light. There are 6 editors who have joined us. At one point there were 14. But thing is, they join, and then they don't participate, except maybe Adam Scheinberg (trust me, I DO want people to help me out). Most people are like that, they relax out after joining in. I am not. I have a passion for what I do, and that's why OSNews has become so successful.
>Take the extra time to come into to >#gnome-hackers and ask whether it's actually true
Reading Seth's email, it was 1000% apparent to me that this was going to be the default theme. Maybe Seth should have been more clear to his answer to the person he was replying to. That email left NO second thoughts to me.
Besides, the freaking article WAS updated. WHY do people STILL have a grudge about it, I don't know. I mean, everyone can do a mistake (however in this case I STILL STAND that Seth's email was crystal clear on its message) and I corrected the 'mistake'.
So why have all these know-it-all people STILL are talking to me about integrity and what not, I don't know. Given the facts the way they were presented to me (at least the way I interpreted them), I did a damn good job reporting the news.
Posted by Ross at Tue Mar 1 14:07:18 2005:
Reading Seth's email, it was 1000% apparent to me that this was going to be the default theme. Maybe Seth should have been more clear to his answer to the person he was replying to. That email left NO second thoughts to me.
Besides, the freaking article WAS updated. WHY do people STILL have a grudge about it, I don't know. I mean, everyone can do a mistake (however in this case I STILL STAND that Seth's email was crystal clear on its message) and I corrected the 'mistake'.
So why have all these know-it-all people STILL are talking to me about integrity and what not, I don't know. Given the facts the way they were presented to me (at least the way I interpreted them), I did a damn good job reporting the news.
People still hold a grudge because this isn't the first time a single mailing list post has mutated into a OSNews article with a different message and corporate overtones.
Check your facts before posting the article and the comparisons to /. will stop.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 14:12:09 2005:
Check your facts before posting the article and the comparisons to /. will stop.
>Check your facts before posting the article
>and the comparisons to /. will stop.
As I explained Ross, Seth's email left no second thoughts to me. There was no reason to go to IRC and fact-check something that was crystal clear to me already. Others, didn't feel that this was crystal clear, but to me, it was. There is a difference of opinion and in this case, it's not about fact checking, it's about understand a reply.
Also, I like Slashdot. I don't like its comment section (I don't like any comment section, not even osnews', comment sections are full of ignorant posts no matter what you read), but the guys at Slashdot do a great job in their reporting, so I am glad you actually compare OSNews to them. ;)
Posted by Ross at Tue Mar 1 14:14:08 2005:
>and the comparisons to /. will stop.
As I explained Ross, Seth's email left no second thoughts to me. There was no reason to go to IRC and fact-check something that was crystal clear to me already. Others, didn't feel that this was crystal clear, but to me, it was. There is a difference of opinion and in this case, it's not about fact checking, it's about understand a reply.
Also, I like Slashdot. I don't like its comment section (I don't like any comment section, not even osnews', comment sections are full of ignorant posts no matter what you read), but the guys at Slashdot do a great job in their reporting, so I am glad you actually compare OSNews to them. ;)
I still don't understand how Seth's mail was crystal clear. It's clear that Clearlooks is being added to gnome-themes CVS, but the theme engine choice hasn't been made.
Posted by David at Tue Mar 1 14:16:20 2005:
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 14:19:10 2005:
Yes, but he was replying on the question:
"Just so we're very, very, VERY clear on this, we are talking about the default theme for 2.12 right?"
To me, that 3-line conversation was a confirmation. If you read hard, you might interpret it in another way, but to me, immediately it was a confirmation.
It's like someone asks "does your cat has 4 legs?" and the other guy replies "yes". Honestly, I don't feel that I need any fact-checking for that.
That's where the problem is: on interpreting that email. And that's why I felt unhappy seeing you blogging about this in that way. I didn't lie (I never lie, in fact, ask me anything :). I just wrote what I believed was a fact.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 14:20:44 2005:
"Just so we're very, very, VERY clear on this, we are talking about the default theme for 2.12 right?"
To me, that 3-line conversation was a confirmation. If you read hard, you might interpret it in another way, but to me, immediately it was a confirmation.
It's like someone asks "does your cat has 4 legs?" and the other guy replies "yes". Honestly, I don't feel that I need any fact-checking for that.
That's where the problem is: on interpreting that email. And that's why I felt unhappy seeing you blogging about this in that way. I didn't lie (I never lie, in fact, ask me anything :). I just wrote what I believed was a fact.
> At least on slashdot the trolls don't write the articles.
Wow. Here is yet another good sample of a reader who doesn't understand what he's reading.
Posted by Ross at Tue Mar 1 14:21:53 2005:
Wow. Here is yet another good sample of a reader who doesn't understand what he's reading.
Point at the decision and I'll believe you. That thread was a progress report.
Can we stop this fighting in my blog now?
Posted by - at Tue Mar 1 14:28:53 2005:
Posted by Mikael Hallendal at Tue Mar 1 14:44:23 2005:
Can we stop this fighting in my blog now?
Eugenia: To me that is a question to confirm that we are discussing default theme for 2.12, not discussing default theme for 2.10.
Even if Seth wrote "I have decided that it's going to ..." it might be a good idea to get a second opinion on whether others also beleive this to be true...
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 14:56:51 2005:
Even if Seth wrote "I have decided that it's going to ..." it might be a good idea to get a second opinion on whether others also beleive this to be true...
>To me that is a question to confirm that we are
> discussing default theme for 2.12, not
>discussing default theme for 2.10.
NOW you tell me! :o
Posted by Mikael Hallendal at Tue Mar 1 16:41:06 2005:
> discussing default theme for 2.12, not
>discussing default theme for 2.10.
NOW you tell me! :o
Well, it was pretty obvious by just reading the mail . This would have been avoided if you had checked to see whether others read it like you did.
Posted by Eugenia at Tue Mar 1 17:40:35 2005:
> Well, it was pretty obvious by just reading the mail .
No, it was not.
>This would have been avoided if you had
>checked to see whether others read it like you did.
Sorry, but this does not make sense. If you read something, and you are 100% sure of what you read, you don't second guess yourself and ask others to spell it for you.
Posted by Gizmo at Tue Mar 1 18:09:48 2005:
Posted by Gordon at Tue Mar 1 19:58:36 2005:
No, it was not.
>This would have been avoided if you had
>checked to see whether others read it like you did.
Sorry, but this does not make sense. If you read something, and you are 100% sure of what you read, you don't second guess yourself and ask others to spell it for you.
Either ironically or depressingly, the story has also propagated to Slashdot: <a href="http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/05/03/01/0016231.shtml?tid=131&tid=8">http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/05/03/01/0016231.shtml?tid=131&tid=8</a>
Posted by Jon at Wed Mar 2 11:33:03 2005:
Dear lord almighty. Thanks Ross for bringing this to my attention - sympathy for the blog trolling.
I've never read osnews properly and I'm less inclined to do so after reading the vitriol on this post, from both sides.
Posted by flower at Wed Oct 12 11:39:59 2005:
I've never read osnews properly and I'm less inclined to do so after reading the vitriol on this post, from both sides.
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