On Monday we released Issue 378 of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. The newsletter has thousands of readers across various formats from wiki to email to forums and discourse.
As we creep toward the 400th issue, we’ve been running a bit low on contributors. Thanks to Tiago Carrondo and David Morfin for pitching in these past few weeks while they could, but the bulk of the work has fallen to José Antonio Rey and myself and we can’t keep this up forever.
So we need more volunteers like you to help us out!
We specifically need folks to let us know about news throughout the week (email them to ubuntu-news-team@lists.ubuntu.com) and to help write summaries over the weekend. All links and summaries are stored in a Google Doc, so you don’t need to learn any special documentation formatting or revision control software to participate. Plus, everyone who participates is welcome to add their name to the credits!
Summary writers. Summary writers receive an email every Friday evening (or early Saturday) with a link to the collaborative news links document for the past week which lists all the articles that need 2-3 sentence summaries. These people are vitally important to the newsletter. The time commitment is limited and it is easy to get started with from the first weekend you volunteer. No need to be shy about your writing skills, we have style guidelines to help you on your way and all summaries are reviewed before publishing so it’s easy to improve as you go on.
Interested? Email editor.ubuntu.news@ubuntu.com and we’ll get you added to the list of folks who are emailed each week and you can help as you have time.
Thursday, Aug 14th, 2014 at 9:22
I think the existing process needs a reboot. Many former contributors have left, including me, in my case, due the apathy or infrequent contributions of some of my fellow contributors who often promised so much but never delivered.
I’m thinking that there needs to be more than a casual “helping out, contribute when you can” approach.
I’d like to see the weekly process change so that contributors feel committed and have something definite to do but not feel that they are fighting a lone battle to get all of the the summaries written each week.
Probably an unrealistic idea but I don’t see the current situation changing unless as I said earlier, the process is to some extent anyway, rebooted.
Thursday, Aug 14th, 2014 at 9:27
Thanks Paul! The casual approach has mostly been since we’re trying to convince newcomers to give this a try if they’re shy about contributing to something. Suggestions welcome on what a reboot might look like, we’ve certainly struggled to find more committed volunteers.
Thursday, Aug 14th, 2014 at 10:04
The only suggestion that I have at present, and given the current number of contributors would not actually work, is to assign summary writers or sub-editors to each section of the newsletter.
Maybe, Canonical, Planet, Community, Blogosphere/Other News and Audio/Video?
Then each sub-editor/summary writer would hopefully feel committed to finding stories but anyone could of course add links to the working .doc. The initial responsibility for summary writing would be with the person or persons who had taken on that section but casual summary writes could, as now, write about whatever they feel happy writing about.
Writing summaries about sections of UWN that interest summary writers little has always been my biggest concern. I mean, just what is OpenStack? It has no part in my life and almost certainly never will. :o)
Anyway, just an idea……..