Debian Weekly News - Contributing

Debian Weekly News is in need of contributors. Putting out Debian Weekly News every week is a lot of work for a small team, but you can help with only a small amount of time spent each week. We need people who read some mailing lists which we don't read and summarize threads in them. We also need people who keep an eye on DebianHELP, Debian Planet, Advogato and other online resources. If you are interested in helping, please read this page to the end and contact us in time.

All you need to do to contribute is send us an email at latest each Monday. In the email just put short paragraphs, each summarizing a thread or event from the mailing list or online resource you are reporting on. In parentheses, include the Message-Id of any messages it would be useful for Debian Weekly News to link to. If possible please include a link to the respective article at <http://lists.debian.org/>. If you prefer, you can send it at any time over the weekend before. Please see the guidelines below.

DWN Style Guidelines

Length - Items should be exactly one paragraph long. All paragraphs should be of similar length, so that they are not too long for reading but contain all relevant information.

Content - Items should have some direct relevance or interest to those in the Debian community. In light of Debian's Social Contract, purely non-free software should not be the center of a news item, but may be mentioned if relevant.

Impartiality - DWN attempts to be an unbiased "Newsletter of Record" for the Debian community. News items should fairly reflect the event as it happened or the discussion as it took place. In any large community there will often be opposing views and DWN's role is to report on these, rather than to judge them.

Regional Spelling Variations - Where spelling of words differs between regions, DWN prefers British English to American English. For example, standardise rather than standardize.

Headings - Names and subjects in headlines should be capitalized.

DWN Production

To understand how DWN is technically written and produced, please learn how this website works and take a look at the CVS repository that is used.

The following describes the DWN production cycle with Joey as main editor.

  1. Right after an issue of DWN is released, Joey will start with an empty new issue. The issue is online at Joey's private website which is available using anonymous CVS as well. Check it out using cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.infodrom.org:/var/cvs/infodrom.org co -d dwn public_html/src/Writing/DWN (empty password for cvs login)
  2. During the entire week he will spontaneously add items and links to the issue.
  3. At the weekend he usually scans through the mailing lists and adds prominent items to the upcoming issue.
  4. Anybody, who would like to add an item to DWN or who has an issue that should be mentioned in the next DWN, should contact us at any time with enough information.
  5. The preview of DWN will be released to the inner circle on Monday evening UTC. All submissions for the upcoming issue should be sent in until the preview is released.
  6. Joey will send the preview to dwn@debian.org for review by the DWN team and to dwn-trans@debian.org for those who wish to work on early translations.
  7. All translators may start to translate the issue right away, since not many things in the original file are subject to change at that late stage.
  8. The site www.debian.org is updated automatically every four hours. All changes and new material, which is included in the CVS repository, is included in each run. Hence, there is a four hour window where updates can be made to CVS that don't result in an immediate update of the web server. DWN will use this window as much as it can.

    This means that the first version of the upcoming issue of DWN (the version which was sent out to translators on the day before) will be committed shortly after this window starts. That is subject to happen at around 14:00 UTC. This will be CVS version 1.1.

  9. This is the time when translators may upload their first translation into the webwml CVS repository as well.
  10. The first update to the original issue of DWN (CVS version 1.2) will reflect all updates and corrections Joey has received until that time. Basically, there will be more security updates, new and orphaned packages added as well. As an exception there may also be added a new paragraph for urgent issues.
  11. If possible no reformattings will be made to the source, allowing all translators to easily find out all relevant changes through »cvs diff«.
  12. Every version Joey sends out for proofreading will reflect one version in CVS so versions can be traced more easily. He will try to find a native English speaker for proofreading before finalizing any issue, but may fail to find a properly suited person, though.
  13. All corrections to DWN should be sent to the DWN team via mail and not committed to CVS directly, even if a couple of versions are available in CVS. After the issue has been released via mail, additional corrections may be made directly to the CVS version. Please accept that corrections committed directly to the CVS version cannot be handled properly before the issue is mailed out.
  14. When DWN is due to be released, at about 18:45 UTC on Tuesday, at least a first version of translations will be available on the web server and some translations could be posted to the list server about simultaneously (German and Portuguese have their own mailing lists, for example).
  15. The worst thing that can happen to translations on the website is that the online version when DWN is released is not accurately up-to-date with the English version. Every translator has to decide whether this is ok for the particular translation or not.

This process has helped make the production of the DWN more efficient (and less traumatic for Joey).

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Debian Weekly News is edited by Martin 'Joey' Schulze.