Writing for the Dot

Firstoff, if you want to write for the dot, you should read the dot.FAQ.

As soon as you've done that, the following intro might prove quite useful to you.

Subjects

There are a couple of ways that initiate a dot story, and to choose a subject:

• A proposal or request for a dot story is being posted to kde-promo, see the recent KDE - Kids Desktop Env? for an example.
• Someone just picks a newsitem and writes something up.
• A planned software release is imminent, in that case, please refer to Release Promotion.
• The Marketing Team comes up with a proposal because we want to highlight something special, or in the line with our general marketing strategy.

Basic workflow

1. A set of keymessage is being developed (usually not more than 3) that cover what should be communicated with the article (in the case of software releases, also keyfeatures need to be picked)
2. Someone picks up the task and announces that on kde-promo ("I'm on it, let's not duplicate work.")
3. A draft is written and posted to kde-promo for review (if timeliness is an issue, one might want to post it directly to the dot, but that would put additional burden on the dot review team)
4. The comment that is given on the draft should be folded into the article, which then gets posted to the dot queue at dot.kde.org addPostingForm (Note that you don't need special karma to post there). Bonuspoints for making links HTML already, that reduces burden for the dot reviewers. If you can't think of a department bit, leave that one empty./li>

Content

• The article should have something that is relevant to KDE as subject, and it should be given a positive pitch.
• KDE should be the central angle in the article.
• The article should be somewhat neutral, definitely not feed trolls or provoke flamewars, it should not harm our relationships with other projects.
• The article should be neutral with respect to vendors (for example distributions), if possible name multiple vendors.
• If in doubt, ask questions on kde-promo ät kde.org, or for the confidential exception, to kde-ev-marketing ät kde.org

As to the subjects, the last days have seen some come along:

• kids desktop environment (interesting, little timely pressure)
• KDE apps on Windows and MacOSX (pretty high profile, needs to be done right)
• Kross in kdelibs
• Birmingham switching to KDE

Many more can be found in the task list.