Fedora Magazine editorial meetings

The goal of this meeting is to set and execute a publishing schedule of appropriate material for the Fedora Magazine.

Meetings happen every week in the #magazine:fedoraproject.org Matrix channel on chat.fedoraproject.org. See the Fedora Magazine Editorial board meeting in the Fedora calendar. Meetings are chaired by that week’s Editor of the Week. If the meeting time changes, be sure to update the link in this paragraph.

Chairing the meeting

The meeting is powered by zodbot. You can use the following commands the start the meeting, to set topics, record important information and decisions, etc.

Roll call

To start the meeting, run the following set of commands.

#startmeeting magazine
#meetingname magazine
#topic roll call
#chair glb rlengland theevilskeleton

People will then join using a .hello2 or a .hello NICK command.

Agenda

This is the standard agenda. Announcing it in advance helps newcomers understand the structure of the meeting.

#topic agenda
#link https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-magazine/workflow/
#info -- 1/ last week's stats --
#info -- 2/ articles in progress --
#info -- 3/ articles to review --
#info -- 4/ articles to edit --
#info -- 5/ publishing schedule --
#info -- 6/ editor of the Week --
#info -- 7/ open floor --

1/ Last week’s stats

#topic 1/ last week's stats

First, let’s look back at the previous week in terms of pageviews. This data can be obtained in the Fedora Magazine Wordpress. On the Dashboard, scroll down to Stats by Jetpack.

#info Week of <MONTH DD>: <NN.N>K pageviews -- <COMMENT>

2/ In progress followup

#topic 2/ in progress followup
#info Looking at the 'in progress' column, is there something that's been finished? Anything to follow up on with its author?
#link board: https://pagure.io/fedora-magazine-newsroom/boards/articles

Review anything that’s in progress. If an article is stuck in progress for a long time without an update, contact the author and ask them if they still plan to finish their work.

Anything that’s already finished and commented so by the author can be moved to the "review" column.

You may also want to check the QA calendar for upcoming test days so that we can expect a new post submission. These tend to come in with very short notice, so the Editor of the Week should use their best judgment in deciding when to publish.

#info Are there any upcoming test days?
#link https://calendar.fedoraproject.org/QA/

Also check the release schedule for upcoming tasks. This is generally only important a few weeks before the Beta and Final releases, but it doesn’t hurt to check just to keep it in mind.

#info Check the release schedule.
#link https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-<N>/f-<N>-magazine-tasks.html

(where <N> is the release being developed)

3/ Finished articles to review

#topic 3/ articles to review
#info Looking at the 'review' column, let's decide which articles are good to go. Move each either to the 'to-edit' (finished) column or to the 'in-progress' (needs more work) column and provide feedback.
#link board: https://pagure.io/fedora-magazine-newsroom/boards/articles

Authors mark their articles as finished by adding a comment announcing that fact. Review the articles and ether move them to the to-edit column, or in case they need some additional work, ask the author in the card about it and move it back to in-progress.

4/ Articles to edit

#topic 4/ articles to edit
#info Looking at the 'to-edit' column, assign an editor and a cover image creator.
#link board: https://pagure.io/fedora-magazine-newsroom/boards/articles

Assign an editor and a cover image designer to each article so it can be moved forward.

5/ Publishing schedule

#topic 5/ Publishing schedule
#info Looking at the 'to-edit' column, decide the publishing schedule for the upcoming week.
#info If there is not enough content, we might also need to look at the 'in-progress' or even the 'ideas' columns to come up with additional content.
#link board: https://pagure.io/fedora-magazine-newsroom/boards/articles

Setting the publishing schedule for the upcoming week period is one of the main goals of this meeting.

Decide which articles should be published when and set the dates for each card on the board.

The next step is to vote on the publishing schedule along with other attendees of the meeting. A proposal of the schedule has the following format:

#proposed #agreed PUBLISHING SCHEDULE:
DAY DATE, NAME (NICK:edit/NICK:image) --
DAY DATE, NAME (NICK:edit/NICK:image) --
DAY DATE, NAME (NICK:edit/NICK:image) --

This can be generated by a script. Run:

$ podman run --rm -it asamalik/magazine-schedule

The script consumes data from the individual cards, so please make sure the date, and the editorrial assignees are set properly.

Find more information about the script in the asamalik/magazine-schedule github repository.

When the schedule is set and agreed upon, announce it by:

#agreed PUBLISHING SCHEDULE:
DAY DATE, NAME (NICK:edit/NICK:image) --
DAY DATE, NAME (NICK:edit/NICK:image) --
DAY DATE, NAME (NICK:edit/NICK:image) --

6/ Editor of the Week

Before the end of the meeting, we need to select next week’s Editor of the Week.

#topic 6/ editor of the Week

Announce the volunteer using:

#info XXXX will be Editor of the Week next week

7/ Open floor

#topic 7/ open floor

Meeting ends

#endmeeting

After the meeting

Send the minutes to the forum. That includes the three links zodbot prints out after the meeting is ended.

Subject: Editorial board meeting recap YYYY-Mmm-DD

Exceptions

The following types of articles generally can route around the weekly meetings. This helps us get critical information out to the audience without waiting for the next board meeting.

  • Security updates: Critical security updates that affect a broad user audience are pre-authorized. Generally an editor will write the update article. If possible, one other editor does a quick spot check. If that would affect the timing, however, the posting editor simply publishes the article and notifies the magazine list. An example is a Firefox security issue.