What is this article doing here?
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| reader Dec 07, 2015 4:51 AM EDT |
I start to see more and more off topic articles here serving advertising purposes only. Then you get 4 - 8 open source propaganda articles from opensource.com per day. It's just too much.
Lxer is loosing its quality. I would rather see less articles daily then to spend my time by filtering rubbish. Just a friendly note from Lxer reader... |
| Ridcully Dec 07, 2015 5:23 AM EDT |
Possibly it is because Andy Updegrove is one of the main players in open standards. http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/ And of course, that is what Linux is all about, isn't it ???? |
| flufferbeer Dec 07, 2015 2:36 PM EDT |
@reader >> Then you get 4 - 8 open source propaganda articles from opensource.com per day. It's just too much. Hear, hear! Then also, there are the series of RedHat/Fedora news releases, "independent" reviews, and the continuous rpm pkges + "independently" touted features somehow getting out of the Redmond mothership+partners, er...that's the RALEIGH mothership+partners. And of course the ++ed: slew of sometimes REPETITIVE++ Baboon2 articles and testimonials closer to the next upcoming version :| Just me 2c |
| jdixon Dec 07, 2015 3:28 PM EDT |
You all do know that LXer takes suggested articles don't you? If you don't like what they're offering, find ones you do and post them. I don't send them many articles, but I do find the occasional one that I think might interest folks. For instance, here's one about Red Hat that's doesn't contain enough meat for a real post, but might interest some readers: http://www.moneyflowindex.org/large-outflow-of-money-witness... |
| Ridcully Dec 07, 2015 4:04 PM EDT |
Thanks jdixon. One can only work with what one has in the queue and one does one's best. And if flufferbeer and reader think there is "duplication of propaganda articles", you should see the quantities of material from some of the sources - the delete key works overtime. The answer is always: the more articles you find and suggest to LXer, the more variety you'll get. |
| gary_newell Dec 08, 2015 4:17 AM EDT |
It must be a difficult balance to determine what should be listed and what shouldn't. Too little and the site becomes stagnant, too much and accusations of lack of quality are thrown. I think it is a simple case of readers skipping the articles they aren't interested in. There is usually around a page of articles every day. Also, one man's rubbish is another man's treasure. You don't want this site to turn into the Linux sub-reddit because that just turns people away with elitest attitudes and poor community spirit. |
| flufferbeer Dec 09, 2015 12:55 AM EDT |
... and I'm tempted to add CentOS to the list of partially "propagandized" RH-related distro articles 'cause of the pair of CentOS newswire articles discretely added just today alone. 2 more non-centOs cents :) |
| Ridcully Dec 09, 2015 3:31 AM EDT |
Flufferbeer, what's your point ? The articles came from two different submission sources on two widely disparate uses of the distro. On some days we may get two or three articles on Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Debian. We publish them if they are on separate matters with the distribution, try to separate them by a number of articles and give as much variety as we can. Read what you want, don't read what you don't want and as Gary said above: One man's rubbish is another man's treasure. |
| flufferbeer Dec 09, 2015 11:29 AM EDT |
@Ridicully, >> Flufferbeer, what's your point ? Seems to me that the pointS are pretty much what reader wrote above. this part: >> more and more off topic articles here serving advertising purposes only. Then you get 4 - 8 open source propaganda articles from opensource.com per day. It's just too much. Lxer is loosing its quality << Maybe you and your cohorts shouldn't ignore reader's friendly comment and instead reconsider it. I'd guess that a few of us -- women as well as men! -- would rather NOT get bogged down trying to slog through the muddy bulk of those thick "rubbishy" and occasionally repetitive open source propaganda articles of late to dig out the buried "treasures" (quoted words from your own analogy) :) fb |
| jdixon Dec 09, 2015 1:41 PM EDT |
> ... and instead reconsider it. I'd guess that a few of us -- women as well as men! -- would rather NOT get bogged down trying to slog through the muddy bulk of those thick "rubbishy" and occasionally repetitive open source propaganda articles of late to dig out the buried "treasures" And how are they supposed to get the good articles if people don't submit them? Their automated search utilities only go so far. And yes, I need to do a better job at that too. |
| Ridcully Dec 09, 2015 5:00 PM EDT |
That's a little unfair flufferbeer........Your comments are never ignored; if they were, I wouldn't have reacted here as often as I have to your comments. But it all comes back to this: the voluntary editors can ONLY work with what they have. I suggest very strongly that you leave it at that. We are now going around in circles. |
| bob Dec 09, 2015 5:01 PM EDT |
Let's all make a New Year's resolution to submit one quality story per week. Maybe it's just a link to something we found interesting, or maybe its a complete article about your own experience with Linux and FOSS. In either case, we will all benefit from your contribution to the LXer community. |
| Ridcully Dec 09, 2015 5:20 PM EDT |
Great idea Bob. Thanks. |
| cybertao Dec 09, 2015 6:53 PM EDT |
Why wait for New Years? I posted a an article two days ago, prompted by this thread, and will endeavour to do more in the future. "Be the change you want to see in the World", "There is kindness in the World because I am kind", etc. As it's only the second article I've posted I can't conclude a trend, but have noticed a long duration between posting and approval on both. |
| gary_newell Dec 10, 2015 5:04 AM EDT |
I guess my questions to Flufferbeer and other readers in general are What sort of articles are you interested in? What do you want to read more about? |
| tuppp Dec 11, 2015 3:19 AM EDT |
bob wrote:Let's all make a New Year's resolution to submit one quality story per week How about instead we just make a resolution to only allow one opensource.com/Red Hat/Fedora/systemd propaganda article per week? gary_newell wrote:I guess my questions to Flufferbeer and other readers in general are What sort of articles are you interested in? In this case, perhaps we should ask, "what articles are you NOT interested in?" I am definitely not interested in any "feel-good" BS articles from opensource.com on Red Hat, Fedora and especially on systemd! Also, please stop with the sappy, insincere Jim Whithurst motivational pieces. |
| Ridcully Dec 11, 2015 6:50 AM EDT |
I get the feeling that it wouldn't matter what article mix hit this site, someone somewhere would have a complaint about some aspect or other. I look forward each day to editing and checking the pending articles for the queue that will eventually be posted on the home page of the LXer site. And you are exposed to so many articles that you simply cannot keep track of "who's who and which is what and wherever", other than that you DO notice when some authors suddenly hit the site with 5-10 articles in succession. Once more, as simply one of the editorial volunteers, I'll repeat this suggestion: Read what you like, don't read what you don't like. Remember, something you may consider trash may be crucially important to someone else. Send articles in that you think should be on LXer, it's great when you do because it gives personal variety to the "spider trawls of the Linux web". And last of all, any of the editorial staff posting stories can ONLY react to what has been sent to the site for possible posting. We cannot publish what we don't have. |
| CFWhitman Dec 11, 2015 10:48 AM EDT |
I generally do tend to skip the systemd articles from opensource.com (they really do seem rather one-sided). However, there are a lot of good articles from the site as well. |
| jdixon Dec 11, 2015 8:57 PM EDT |
I probably skip 80% or more of the articles in the queue. Of the current front page of stories, I think I looked at four. |
| BernardSwiss Dec 11, 2015 9:49 PM EDT |
Of course, people are free to recommend better* choices... *) ie. the kinds of articles they'd like to see more of, themselves -- that is how LXer actually works. |
| penguinist Dec 12, 2015 12:43 PM EDT |
cybertao wrote:Why wait for New Years? I posted a an article two days ago, prompted by this thread, and will endeavour to do more in the future. Ok fellow LXer community members, I'm picking up on the challenge. I hope everyone enjoys the article I found and posted today about the ROS open source robotics operating system. |
| jdixon Dec 12, 2015 3:17 PM EDT |
OK, in keeping with the above, I've submitted a link to an article to the queue. It's not LXer's normal fare, so I'm not sure it will be approved. On the off chance it isn't, you can find the article I submitted story at http://seekingalpha.com/article/3528746-why-is-the-market-pr... As I note in the submission, you may have to register with Seeking Alpha to read the entire article. Added - Ah, I see that it was accepted. |
| jdixon Dec 28, 2015 2:09 PM EDT |
Two more articles, another one on Red Hat and one on an open source stock prediction framework submitted to the queue. I'll be trying to make time over the next few months to submit (and possibly write up some original, though I make no promises in that regard) investment oriented articles for LXer. |
| flufferbeer Jan 09, 2016 2:10 AM EDT |
@penguinist and others, That's great! Now if we can do something or maybe ANYTHING(?) about that prolific self-promoting RedHat/rpm fanperson flooding and downright BESIEGING the current Dump-on-Debian discussion thread.... It's also great regarding distros, to get good non-RedHat/Fedora, non-Baboont2 newswire stories here such as that very dumped-on 7 Reasons Why Debian is the Dominant Distro. fb |
| cybertao Jan 09, 2016 3:03 AM EDT |
I was thinking today that lxer could do with a mechanism to judge the quality of an article, even though quality is subjective and to the judgement of readers as both individuals and groups. Not an 'upvote/downvote' system, but perhaps a 'like' feature. When a story is posted it's hard to estimate how it was received by readers and get feedback on its strengths and weaknesses. I was reading 'Embracing open source as a visual artist' and was taken with how good a read it was, but had no way of expressing that other than starting a thread attached to the story on how I liked it - which just seems a little excessive and would get way out of control if every story had a thread discussing how people liked or disliked it. And then there's the lurkers who don't want to participate in discussion but will give feedback in other ways (who might start participating if they already have an account, are logged in, and decide to add their 2¢). Stories people dislike are more likely to have a thread started about them stating so, which creates a negative environment. Not that starting 'negative' threads should be discouraged as they can generate interesting discussions with rebuttals. A system that creates constructive feedback is important...and tricky. While it would be moderately easy to filter out stories containing specific Groups or posted by specific users, I don't believe self-censorship is constructive. There must be some simple ways of promoting quality even if it's a series of guidelines for everyone to follow. |
| reader Jan 11, 2016 3:49 AM EDT |
I use Lxer regularly for about 8 years now. In this "short" time the entire landscape of Free and Open source community has changed entirely and there is no doubt about it. Lxer helped the entire FOSS ecosystem by promoting community projects, small home projects and technical websites which would not have a chance to see a daylight otherwise, thus in its own way Lxer helped LiGNUx and FOSS community to get to the state where it is now. For this it has my sincere appreciation. However, the days when we called open source an ideology are over. Now, it is business as any other. As a result, the Lxer FOSS community news aggregator has now become a viable propaganda tool to serve corporate ends. I do not believe that any of the Lxer's visitors need Lxer to keep them in the loop of what is going on at Redhat Corp. or at Linux Foundation, the "non-profit" association comprising of 185 Corporate Members. In fact, if you have just a little bit of interest in the open source, news like these are hard to avoid no matter where you look. If Lxer is going to follow its current news selection pattern we should not be surprised if in addition to Redhat, RPM and Opensource.com propaganda we will see more news about Microsoft and its open source products, thus leaving even less space for ideology, community projects, GNU and Free Software. Current Lxer's site title reads: "The world is talking about GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software". This mission statement as I remember was true 8 years ago and before that. If the title would reflect a current Lxer's front page the title should be changed to "The world is talking about Open Source Software". Consequently, if there was a purpose for Lxer, now it is lost, and, if Lxer had wildebeest face, now it is sheep. Just a friendly note from Lxer reader... |
| jdixon Jan 11, 2016 6:55 AM EDT |
> However, the days when we called open source an ideology are over. Now, it is business as any other. As a result, the Lxer FOSS community news aggregator has now become a viable propaganda tool to serve corporate ends. Which simply means that there is all the more need for user selected and written articles. |
| Ridcully Jan 11, 2016 7:07 AM EDT |
And as we keep on saying......the editors can ONLY post items they have received. Find some new articles; write something challenging. It's useless complaining......DO something - don't leave it to everybody else. |
| dotmatrix Jan 11, 2016 9:56 AM EDT |
@Ridcully: Problems are:
|
| penguinist Jan 11, 2016 11:56 AM EDT |
Ok, here is my New Year's resolution: 1. Find and post one quality LXer story per week during all of 2016. 2. Write at least one quality original article on LXer during 2016. 3. Starting today. |
| flufferbeer Jan 11, 2016 12:23 PM EDT |
@ridiculy, >> And as we keep on saying......the editors can ONLY post items they have received. No, that's what YOU may keep on saying! And it seems to me that YOU are disingenuous when you say that "editors can only post items they have received" when we can even see over the last week or so WHICH story-summaries get more complete coverage and WHICH story-summaries get mere one-liners. Got examples? Here are a nice lllonnnggg run of 'em........ http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224263/ A mere TWO sentences on this interesting and very important issue! http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224254/ Two sentences--full paragraph on a less important subject http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224252/ One long sentence http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224239/ One SHORT sentence lead--longer text expansion on this KEY LM release upgrade http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224253/ Two sentences http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224240/ Three sentences--full paragraph on something that is much less directly related to Free/Open Source Software http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224242/ A mere SINGLE sentence! http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224244/ Two sentences with maybe the ALL-TIME RECORD of listed LXer Groups (12)??!! http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224246/ A SHORT single sentence lead with ZERO text expansion on this KEY LM release upgrade WTH? WTH? WTH? WTH? WTH? WTH? WTH? WTH? WTH? I'm totally with reader on this. Right back on YOU current editors and others who continue to digress, distract, and gloss over reader's points in this thread.... got BETTER editors???!!! (WHERE OH WHERE have tuxchick and dinotrac been over the last handful of years? Could we ever bring 'em back?) fb |
| penguinist Jan 11, 2016 12:48 PM EDT |
@flufferbeer, I'm not sure that you understood Ridcully's point. All LXer content is contributed and organized by volunteers. We are a community and as such we are only as strong as the individuals who make up the community. I've searched through the LXer archives, flufferbeer, and I find that you did contribute one story to the LXer newswire in 2007. That's great. If you will next take your strong opinions and translate them into a quality second posting, and a third and a fourth, that would be even greater. Seriously, we will all benefit if you would take the time to organize a story for the LXer newswire. I personally feel a responsibility to be a contributor to this community and I see that my posting of an open source event taking place at CES has hit the wire. I hope it is enjoyable reading for some who are following the role of FOSS in the automobiles of the future, but I also hope it will serve as a model and an encouragement to others to make their own individual contributions to our newswire. Thank you Ridcully for your many tireless contributions. We appreciate you! |
| Ridcully Jan 11, 2016 5:38 PM EDT |
Thankyou for your vote of confidence penguinist. It is deeply appreciated when these sorts of attacks continue. Flufferbeer, my work as an editor for LXer is purely voluntary and I consider it an honour to be allowed to contribute my skills as a writer. My work for LXer is not paid for in any way and I am very content that it should be so. For your information, every morning I go through the list of possible articles for posting on LXer. I check the url is active and correct, ensure that the article contents are more or less to do with Linux or FOSS, try to ensure that the Story Type and Groups are reasonably accurate for the article and then post it onto the future queue. I would imagine that the other editors do precisely the same thing. As dotmatrix indicates for himself, I too have a multitude of things to do and spending a morning searching the web for possible articles or writing one, well.....quite frankly, the time isn't easily come by. Finally flufferbeer, let me draw your attention to this little gem in your last posting: Quoting:http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/224246/ A SHORT single sentence lead with ZERO text expansion on this KEY LM release upgrade I happen to know about this one because I posted it. And I specifically set the Story type to "Announcements" which to me indicates that the item isn't a long article as such, but a simple statement that something has happened. Of course you cannot expect a long, serious article with that descriptor. The announcement item also contains a little information about the release and includes a list of mirrors. At least some Mint users may have found this useful don't you think ? Put it this way, you cannot ignore the settings for a story. We try to tell LXer readers what they can expect in any article using those descriptors and sometimes it is quite difficult to make them fit a particular item that has been submitted. Flufferbeer, instead of throwing criticisms, write an article for LXer on a topic you would like to see, and submit it. Become involved, rather than sitting back and hurling bricks. |
| dotmatrix Jan 11, 2016 6:40 PM EDT |
@Anyone: >write an article for LXer on a topic you would like to see, and submit it. Become involved, rather than sitting back and hurling bricks. Sometimes when I feel like too much of a freeloader, I'll hunt down a few answers for newbies on GNU/Linux forums. It's a little easier to handle answering a question than trying to create some content that stands by itself. It's also a good way to learn and to try to keep the sarcasm down to a low roar. I know this comment doesn't necessarily 'help' the current thread direction... but stream of thought isn't picky. @penguinist: >2. Write at least one quality original article on LXer during 2016. Me too. >1. Find and post one quality LXer story per week 2 weeks during all of 2016. Fixed it for me. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!