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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Suggestion: Establishing a press fact-check team
From:       Jens Reuterberg <jens () ohyran ! se>
Date:       2014-02-19 14:27:55
Message-ID: 1506175.xCQJTChdYr () taffy
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This is a massive issue - I wouldn't say Phoronix or openess is a massive 
issue but how we deal with press.

It has become painfully appearent that the ideal seems to be using 
communication models that where relevant up until the 1940's where the 
assumption was that a sender said something, the message gets passed to 
whatever receiver who then had an easily predicted reaction.

For example the hoo-haw about misinterpreted press releases or "leaked" 
technical discussions. (quotations because it's not leaked when its made 
publicly available). 

I can understand the frustration but the sollutions debated are based on the 
idea that the issue is the receiver and not the channel or the sender. I think 
the issue is us.
Our marketing system have a system where information is treated as snippets of 
direct information that doesn't require decoding where all mistakes must be 
blamed on the receivers inabilities to handle them.  The solution to the issue 
is I think simple and can be divided into three methods:

a) Stop all information to be leaked by not speaking in public channels (this 
is of course not ok as it would clash with the work methods used and the cost 
would be too great)
b) Help receivers decode information correctly (what you suggested, Thomas) 
and try to enforce the media landscape to only use proper info.
c) Outsend the secondary sender. This is my preferred method as it makes work 
possible in the open, its not a Sisyfos task of constantly policing 
information and it only requires a more dedicated consideration on marketing 
as a whole.

How it works:
1) "Talky" is produced, a new technical backend method for handling IM's.
2) Debates on Talky spring up on the mailing lists and its connections to the 
former technical backend, the widely impopular "Shitbird".
3) The information is picked up by a newsoutlet or blog who then rephrace it 
to make it a clickable bit of information angering the devs because now they 
have people assuming one is the other and false information about how it works 
is being passed around as facts.
4) This is where the method is set into motion. The marketing team, the HIG 
team and the visuals team contact each other and the lead dev for Talky and 
produce a press-kit with nice visuals, infographics and easily defined 
information and "quotables" with new information that increase clickthrough. 
The visuals are not posted elsewhere and slapped with the intended press 
source logo somewhere where it cant be easily cut out.

The effect:
a) the initial information snippet looses all appeal and becomes a small 
rumour.
b) other press sources may refer to it but reprint OUR information as its more 
easily attainable and the effort needed to sift through that and create an 
attack-text from it and the original bit is way harder than just reprinting 
our information as it contains nice graphics and click-through comments.
c) the initial news source is the only one who doesn't get the new information 
and anyone who reprints that news source information is last in line for a 
dedicated press kit pressuring news sources to view information sceptically.
d) By making this a culture of information - where we give out teasers to 
trusted outlets, graphical news aimed at the main reader group of that outlet 
to them and give them "quotes" - we can make junk-info pointless without 
having to get into a fit about it every time.

On Tuesday 18 February 2014 21.18.11 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Dear KDE promo team,
> as some of you may know, recently we had at least two cases [1,2] of a
> certain news site (Phoronix) reporting about discussions on KDE mailing
> lists which were not made public by us yet, and - far worse - getting some
> important facts wrong.
> Some KDE developers consider such news sites "The FOSS Yellow Press",
> because they tend to pick up any news they can get and present them in a
> way aimed at maximizing clicks, not producing quality journalism.
> We've tried to contact Phoronix' main author on several occasions but got no
> reply, so we assume he simply does not want to talk to us.
> That by itself isn't a huge problem, since Phoronix is a blog and not a
> press website, so people should take what they write with a grain of salt
> anyways. The problem is, however, that other, generally more reputable,
> press sites tend to pick up news posted there and link to them without
> properly fact- checking them first. This, in turn, may lead their readers
> to think that Phoronix posts the truth. This problem certainly isn't
> limited to one blog, Phoronix is just the most prominent example.
> On a Google+ comment thread [3], we discussed how to deal with this
> situation. Among the suggestions was to move discussions we don't want
> media to report on prematurely to private mailing lists or to try to
> convince the press to ignore Phoronix (and other "FOSS Yellow Press"
> outlets). I think the first suggestion would be bad for a FOSS project, and
> the second simply isn't feasible.
> 
> What I think would be a more constructive way to deal with the situation is
> to task a few people which have good knowledge of - and ideally connections
> with - the FOSS press landscape with looking for articles which get facts
> wrong or grossly misrepresent something - or link to such articles without
> proper accompanying comments - and offer to clarify the facts.
> Though this would not keep the "Yellow Press" from spreading nonsense to get
> traffic, it would at least keep those sites which care about quality
> journalism from repeating that nonsense blindly.
> 
> This is not an easy task, as we need to make sure we don't come across as
> trying to censor the press, but letting factual errors spread across the
> FOSS media landscape is just as dangerous.
> 
> Do you think this makes sense? And if so: Are there members of the team
> willing and able to take on that task?
> 
> Please keep me in CC on your replies, since I'm not subscribed to the promo
> list.
> 
> Thank you,
> Thomas
> 
> [1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU4NjU
> [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTYwNjM
> [3] https://plus.google.com/+MartinGr%C3%A4%C3%9Flin/posts/T23tK6r4qLb
> 
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