News Queue

This is a page is about how news gets posted for www.osgeo.org.

= News Editor = News for osgeo.org goes through a news editor that ensures some degree of consistency and appropriateness. Currently the news editor is Frank Warmerdam with backup editor Jo Walsh. The News function is a function of the Website Committee, though it is normally handled by the news editors.

= news.osgeo.org =

The project at https://news.osgeo.org/ was set up as a portal for project and site news. However, it is not clear to me (FrankW) that this serves any useful purpose as opposed to just putting the news as content on the mail www site. Currently some of the content (such as developer spotlights and previous RSS efforts) is in the news project, but I'm tempted to move everything back to www and de-commision this project.

= Submitting News =

Email new news items to [mailto:news_item@osgeo.org news_item@osgeo.org]. This goes to the news editors. Projects, committees or other interested parties can submit a news item to that mailing list. Then the editor (or if they are unavailable, the backup editor) would take care of formatting the item for consistency and putting it on the news page.

It might also be reasonable for the news mailing list to be "subscribed" to an email feed from the various project announcement do-hickies, but I'm not really sure if they produce email or if this is worthwhile since the announce feature isn't currently much used.

On occation the news editors may also post items based on stuff they see happening without explicit direction, though this isn't the main task of the editor.

= Mechanics of Posting =

News Items
New news items go into www/content/news/news_archive/news_archive.html in the www project CVS repository. Please use similar styling to what is there (h3 headers for item, include date). HTML is currently constructed by hand. If the item is going to be very long, a separate HTML file should be created in the news_archive subdirectory, and the addition to news_archive.html would be a summary with a link.

Periodically items should be moved from Current News to Archived News. I imagine anything older than 2 months should no longer be consider current.

The news item should also be posted via the Announce mechanism. Roughly the same HTML used in news_archive.html should be suitable for use here.

Event Items
New events should be added to www/content/news/event_archive/event_archive.html in the www project CVS repository. Please use similar styling to what is there.

Please move events that are in the past down to the Past Events section.

While missing now (July/2006) it is intended that events should include a link to a VisCom wiki page about the OSGeo presence there, so that folks can help man the booth, etc.

Generally speaking we should only be listing events that OSGeo will appear at in some fashion, or that are especially pertinent to our mission.

Events can also be Announced though I'm not sure what the best timing for that would be.

Developer Spotlights
Developer spotlights currently live in www/developer_spot/index.html in the news.osgeo.org project's SVN repository.

= VisCom Press Releases =

Some effort should also be made to ensure that any VisCom press releases make it into the news stream, and vice versa that major announcements are proposed to viscom as press releases. (need to link to viscom pr page...)

= announce@osgeo.org =

This email list is currently never used as far as I know. I think it would make sense for all announcements to also be distributed to this mailing list so it would act as a relatively low traffic way for people to keep track of OSGeo activities and progress. To be considered.