On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Andrew Savory wrote:
On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 jg@cyberstorm.demon.co.uk wrote:
As stated in the P-R, the launch date is broadly speaking October.
Okay. You have announced a site in a press release. When people go to the site, they see "coming soon". What impression does that convey?
OK, my intentions of announcing that the project exists and that we will be here soon may not be received in exactly that way. This is clear from you and Laurie and MJR are saying. To you and any others who understood for whatever reason that the site was to launch immediately I unreservedly apologise.
I obviously under-emphasised the line about October, and even this may have been wrong. I can only hope that the majority of people don't take it that the site is up and running, and to this time I haven't received any mails to that effect other than ALUG ones.
As MJR has mentioned, this date is ambitious, but it should be noted that I WILL NOT LAUNCH until the LNC Team feels it is ready.
What you have just done is effectively launch the site. Why publicise a site that is not yet open for business?
To generate interest, why else? The GNOME project was announced before GNOME-1.0 got out. They wanted interest, developers, feedback, publicity. To a point, so do we.
October is the wish-month
There is absolutely nothing wrong with setting ambitious deadlines. What you shouldn't do is fall into the vapourware trap. How many articles does LNC have ready for the punters?
At no point did I say that the site was ready. In your eyes (and I dare say many others) the date published is premature. I accept that that is conceivable, and I again apologise if that is the case. But I am determined to roll out the site with good content and have it regularly updated, if the team doesn't deliver, we can't succeed and we will be history, we as a voluntary project can only try our best.
In hindsight, the launch date could have been witheld from the P-R, but since no-one on list mentioned this after two postings of the draft copy, I made the call and accept any flak should we not be held to it. The words "shit happens" comes to mind ;-)
Yeah, shit happens. I remember the posting of the draft copy of the press release, but don't remember you saying "guys, I'm going to announce this".
I'm sorry, but I did try and make that clear. I don't remember the exactly text used on both the draft posts, but I do remember saying that this was to be released, and gave the date in the P-R itself.
To be perfectly honest, who is likely to rebuff us for missing October?
Er, our public? People visiting LNC following on from the publicity. To be honest, the "coming soon" message gives a bad name to every one of us associated with the project.
I'm sorry, I disagree. To anyone eagre enough to visit the site over October and then fire complaints at us if we don't deliver in October, I will apologise.
I suspect that while linuxnewbie.com may be of reasonable profile name and ambition-wise, delays will be tolerated while we get it right. Again I may be wrong, but since the deed is done, I can only but work to get it right ASAP. In six months time will everyone be saying, "LNC - the site who launched after the announced date"? I obviously can't guarantee there won't be, but I bet our primary audience won't be.
And if you'd like to help us in the project, get in touch and maybe you can help make it faster and better!
...and just pray we get it up and ready before the publicity. Oh, whoops.
Sorry. I suggest we get back to more constructive work rather than this conversation which is obviously not in anyone's interests.