In June 2018 issue I introduced a concept of "Featured Articles". This issue is to discuss this change, whether to keep or drop it or come up with a more objective criteria which articles to "feature".

I started with a flat list like in previous issue and faced a problem. Some articles really stand out for their quality and took days to write and review, while others are regular news coverage.

Name candidates for the new group of articles were "highlights", "more deep", "original research", "blog posts", "selected articles" but I arrived at "Featured".

Obviously this is totally subjective human judgement that may have issues, like I can do a mistake or someone might think "why isn't my article featured".

snr01 suggested that

some sort of more objective criteria might be needed, such as:

1. Article is primarily about Decred
2. Article is factually correct in the facts that are presented (which doesnt include opinions)
3. Author is either a "vetted" community member, or someone "known" in the broader crypto world, or there is consensus on #writers_room that it's a good article... I guess by majority.

During the making of Jan 2019 I had a ton of confusion regarding the placement of content:

• interview with cryptoemporium: Integrations, People, or both?
• interview with donmario: People, Media, or both?
• blueyard second fund raise: Adoption or Relevant External?
• Marketing 2019 and Events 2019 proposals: Governance, Outreach or Events?
• independent contractor roadmap: People, Media or something else?
• TNABC videos: Events, Media, or both?
• report new software releases in Development? Technically it's not Development. Add to guidelines when decided.
• decide for how long to put post-vote proposal updates in Governance and when to move them to other sections (e.g. bug bounty moved to Development)

This is somewhat a reiteration and generalization of #11.

Current level of detail shows the depth of Decred as originally intended, but for some audiences like newsletter subscribers it might be too much. For example, Stellar monthly update is much shorter and perhaps better targeted for specific groups.

Options:

• Produce a stripped down version for newsletter as part of the standard workflow
• Add a short "Highlights" block at the beginning
• Offer two newsletters, "basic" and "advanced"

This issue focuses solely on the April Update as opposed to #1 and #2 applicable to all future updates.

Some things I'd love to double check:

• Did I miss anything in Development section? Is Politeia text correct?
• Any ideas how to improve Integrations section?
• Do bullets in Media and Events look better?

Create a storage location to host and workflows to produce translations.

TODO: extract from #55

Retrospective issue to place my review notes.

You can trace the related changes I made in the history of the draft that is saved in the Git tag:

https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/commits/archive/draft1907/journal/201907.md

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft10/journal/201910.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• Ditto update (cryptoleslie or liz_bagot, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #event_planning to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Add title image
• Ask #writers_room to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If bugs are found in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch

Shall we include news like "Ledger integration planned for June"?

Currently, People is really about contributors, while community stats are in Community Discussions but they are not really discussions.

How about moving Community stats to People to make it both about the community of contributors and the wider community?

Explore ways to improve the quick visual recognition of topics.

Just use links (current)

• to repositories in Development
• to services in Integrations
• to event pages in Events

First bold word

Bolding first word of the paragraph highlights the topic without introducing a new level of (sub)headings:

• example https://medium.com/decred/decred-journal-may-2018-6ea021e4f26a
• example https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/poc/bold/posts/201804.md

Level 3 headings in Development

• example https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/poc/devh3/journal/201904.md

Release checklist

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft04/journal/202004.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so that people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• PR update (l1ndseymm, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • very helpful: http://dcrextdata.planetdecred.org/community
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (https://charts.dcr.farm/)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #events to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• PO review of all sections
• Ask #writers to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Add title image
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Submit Medium link to r/decred
• Tweet Medium link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If changes are necessary after the release, add commits to gh-pages (test in draft if needed) and update Medium
• Update index
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch
• Start the new cycle

Currently developments are reported twice: first after they are merged to master, and later after new release.

If something is found to be omitted in the issue of some month, shall we retroactively add it to that issue?

For example, this article was missed in April issue.

Jun 12 Washington DC meetup

The event had about 11 people in total in attendance. Akin Sawyerr gave an overview presentation on Decred and answered questions from the audience. The event was co-hosted by TechSpace Balston and the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network of DC. A lot of questions were asked about our governance process, how we pay and manage contractors, and how Decred differed from platforms like Ethereum from a participation/contribution perspective.

Jun 19 Reston Golang meetup

The event had 21 people in attendance, mostly developers. Akin Sawyerr gave an overview presentation on Decred and answered questions from the audience. The event was hosted by Comcast.
Most of the questions were of a general nature around how to acquire cryptocurrencies, understanding the basic terminology, and the potential economic impact of cryptocurrencies. Post the event a participant asked to know more about what Decred has built leveraging Golang, there is a desire to see actual code demos etc.

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft02/journal/202002.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so that people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• PR update (l1ndseymm, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • can help: http://dcrextdata.planetdecred.org/community
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #events to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Ask #writers to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Add title image
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• Watch for bug reports in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch
• Start the new cycle

The work is being divided by various people.

kozel and guang have also offered support.

Anyone from the community can pitch in by joining the #decred_journal Matrix room (currently you need to request invite in #writers_room).

Sometimes I add credit like @X did this work Y without deep consideration.

A possible problem here is that it highlights some people and some work, while not highlighting all other great work that happens every month.

Pros of selective credits:

• sometimes it feels natural to give someone a shoutout
• it shows that things are built by real people and not some faceless impersonal "team"
• adding names everywhere would bloat the text too much

Cons:

• it may be unfair to all the other work

Closed in favor of decredcommunity/translations/issues/17

Content moved:

https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/docs/contributing.md

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft11/journal/201911.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• Ditto update (cryptoleslie or liz_bagot, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #event_planning to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Add title image
• Ask #writers_room to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If bugs are found in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch

The "we" vs "I" is an interesting consideration.

So far "we" has been used and the most reasonable way to interpret it is "Decred Journal authors".

• it correctly reflects the fact that DJ is written by a group of people
• it suggests that DJ aims for neutrality and avoids opinions, which is both true and not entirely true:
  • DJ aims for accurate reporting and to always reference the sources
  • DJ does aim for neutrality and avoids opinions in most cases, but
  • DJ shares the world view and values of Decred, which makes it somewhat opinionated
• "we" implies that all DJ authors agree with all statements (and jokes)
• it limits the potential for adding personal opinions (not sure we need it, just noting)
• it limits the potential of jokes

Shall we place the image info under the image or leave it as tooltip (kind of an Easter egg)?

Demo:

https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/poc/titleimage/journal/201905.md

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft03/journal/202003.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so that people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• PR update (l1ndseymm, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • very helpful: http://dcrextdata.planetdecred.org/community
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (https://charts.dcr.farm/)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #events to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• PO review of all sections
• Ask #writers to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Add title image
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Submit Medium link to r/decred
• Tweet Medium link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If changes are necessary after the release, add commits to gh-pages (test in draft if needed) and update Medium
• Update index
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch
• Start the new cycle

This is a really small nit, but I suggest ordering the archives in the index page in the reverse order of publication (most recent first) since that's the scroll direction when accessing the main content page and one is usually interested in the most recent journal publication.

Maybe too far ahead, but writing down while the idea is fresh.

Emailing HTML to your friends is not cool. If there is a demand for plaintext version that would require rewriting all links to [1] style to keep the plaintext readable.

Related: shorter version (#4), newsletter.

Currently different IDs are used: Matrix, Slack, Twitter, Reddit usernames as well as real names. This issue is to try to define some guidelines or standards.

Matrix complicates things further by having MXID and Display name which can be different. Display name can change, while MXID cannot.

The primary reason to bother about it is giving people correct identifier to contact mentioned people.

The June 12 event is a bit more than a meetup. Its a jointly sponsored event with the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network and TechSpaces. Could you replace the current text with:

Join Decred, The Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network of DC, and Techspaces for an evening of conversations and an overview of Decred: A Decentralized Autonomous Entity. Tickets are free but limited, get yours here: Meetup

Link to the draft: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft09/journal/201909.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• Ditto update (cryptoleslie or liz_bagot, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #event_planning to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Add title image
• Ask #writers_room to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If bugs are found in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch

Map of existing and possible content to cover, with some items marked for possible automation.

Moved here: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/docs/content.md

Issues coming out on 6th day of the month (or later) lead to almost a week of events not getting covered and waiting for next month. The solution is either to shift coverage interval to be between release days, or to release sooner.

There are several tools to automatically turn a Markdown file into a Medium post:

• a Chrome extension: https://github.com/psranga/m2m
• a web tool http://markdowntomedium.com/ (afaict it requires you to log into it via github, privacy concern)
• a command line tool https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/markdown-to-medium
• maybe there are other tools

This issue is to find the best way to quickly generate and update Medium posts from Markdown sources on GitHub. It will allow to save time on manual work and improve formatting accuracy.

Sept 20 A Framework for Blockchain Governance Meetup Washington DC. Along with Thomas Cox, the Chief Governance Officer of StrongBlock, Akin Sawyerr will be speaking on and taking questions on a Blockchain Governance Framework developed the Wharton Crypto Governance roundtable group of which he is a member.

Oct 29 - 31 World Crypto Conference Las Vegas, Nevada. Akin Sawyerr will be speaking on a panel on "Governance Practices" and will have an opportunity to highlight the Decred governance model and process.

Call for Participation

Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but didn't know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started! (This Week in Rust 320)

Interesting, I like how they organized this. We might try to adopt something similar. This will require help from project leads.

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft01/journal/202001.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so that people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• Ditto update (cryptoleslie or liz_bagot, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #events to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Ask #writers to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Add title image
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If bugs are found in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch
• Start the new cycle

Initially it was: commit as it goes and squash some.

Currently it is: minimize master commits count but keep individual contributions as separate commits. Right now it yields 3-5 commits per issue. Commits before rebase are saved in "archive/before-big-rebase" branch.

To consider: one commit per issue. After the issue is released intermediate states are not really interesting (unlike code). The only problem is exact contributions (patches) are lost.

Options to preserve contributions:

• State in the article (as done currently)
• Use Co-authored-by (GitHub specific?)
• Preserve commits in merged branches
• Preserve commits in master (current)

Posted on reddit:

I read the Decred April Journal , and it was great! Momentum looks good.
However, the journal does not say much about the priority of development projects that are being worked on, and there are so many items in the 2018 roadmap.
From reading the posts here, I guess Politeia is the current priority, and I guess LN is next?

Reported here: https://matrix.to/#/!MgQoetFiyjrHAywokv:decred.org/$154234733317729PQFkh:decred.org

Some things I considered but couldn't decide. Let's branch any non-trivial discussion to separate issues.

• Keep quotes of people or rewrite to minimze text and streamline style?
  => moved to #3
• Events
  • Consistent structured format (title, date, city, country, people) vs free float?
    => June 2018 issue has settled on a reasonable format.
  • Use table (boring?)?
    => No, don't use tables
• Group paragraphs by topic: introduce 3rd level headings or start paragraphs with bold first words?
  => moved to #24
• Always mention people who made/reported/announced something?
  => Mixed, not strict.
• Always put (source) after quote?
  => Yes
• Always prepend author in quote?
  => No, put author name in parens after the quote
• Use "we", "our", "us", etc?
  => moved to #93
• Use "I"?
  => moved to #93
• Level of detail: Shorter version for newsletter?
  => moved to #4

Sometimes one link is relevant in multiple sections. For example, a video interview from an event is relevant in both Media and Events. What is better, always repeat the link in both sections, always choose one section or decide for every case?

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• Ditto update (cryptoleslie or liz_bagot, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #event_planning to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Add title image
• Ask #writers_room to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If bugs are found in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch

There are 4 possible moments when to report new developments:

• work started
• work ongoing (some work happened this month)
• work completed (merged to master)
• work released (new binary release accessible to consumers)

Let's discuss alternative format and release schedule.

Schedule:

• Weekly. "This week in X" is getting popular.
• Biweekly. Middle ground between monthly and weekly. Ditto uses this to report.

Format / structure / content:

• Separate Relevant External into its own "Biweekly|Monthly Cryptospace Recap" (or a better name).

Add, please!
https://github.com/MaiconJunge/decred-news/blob/master/journal/201812PTBR.md
https://medium.com/@maiconjunge/jornal-decred-dezembro-de-2018-947c616b894f
Thank you!

I'll be attending a governance round-table event on behalf of Decred. Here are the details:

The Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is launching a new initiative on the governance of blockchain-related projects, platforms, and consortia. We are hosting an initial meeting at Wharton San Francisco for approximately 25 highly-esteemed experts, representing a wide variety of perspectives and backgrounds.

July 1-2, 2019
Wharton Roundtable on Cryptogovernance
2 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA

Wharton Cryptogovernance Workshop 7-19.docx

I wonder how DJ compares to other periodic project updates in the crypto space and wider open source software space.

If anybody has time and interest to check other updates and share your experience:

• https://medium.com/vertcoin-blog
• https://matrix.org/blog/category/this-week-in-matrix/
• any other

DRAFT: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/draft12/journal/201912.md

Dependencies: Send notice in advance so people can plan their work.

• Title image via an issue in dcrdesign (notify by: 20th, ready by: 3rd)
  • GitHub version must be 768x384 px
  • ask for image title and description (saender)
• first time contributors (degeri or s_ben)
• dev activity stats (degeri or s_ben)
• Ditto update (cryptoleslie or liz_bagot, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)
• Outreach update (Dustorf, notify by: 28th, ready by: 3rd)

End of month snapshots: Snapshot data that is hard to obtain later.

• snapshot social media stats
  • Politeia, Matrix, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub dcrd, Instagram
  • (opt) non-English platforms: Telegram (es pt zh it ru), Twitter (es), Instagram
• staking
  • 30-day average ticket price (https://dcrstats.com)
• nodes
  • node count, versions, etc (ask chappjc or #dev or dcr.farm)

Release

• Extract more dev updates from GitHub repos
• Complete Development (by: 2nd)
• Complete People (by: 2nd)
• PO review Development and People
• Ask in #dev to review Development and People
• Complete Events
• (opt) Ask #events to review Events
• Complete Outreach
• Complete Media
• (opt) Ask #marketing to review Outreach+Events+Media
• Complete Governance
• Complete Network
• Complete Mining, Integrations, Adoption
• (opt) Find interesting Reddit and Twitter threads
• Complete Community Discussions
• Complete Markets
• Complete Relevant External
• (opt) Ask quoted people to review their texts
• Complete Intro
• Pre-review: check spelling, grammar, test that links work
• PO review of all sections
• Ask #writers to review (by: 3rd)
• Incorporate all feedback
• Resolve all TODOs
• Carefully check that all people who contributed or gave feedback are in credits
• Lint
• Add title image
• Remove {DRAFT} from title
• Pre-release review
• Publish on GitHub with a single commit to gh-pages
• Publish on Medium (richardred or Haon)
• (opt) Verify Medium version, check for formatting issues
• Choose the best link to disseminate: Medium vs GitHub Pages vs decredcommunity, etc
• Submit best link to r/decred
• Tweet best link via decredproject. Don't forget to add title image. (by: 6th)
• If bugs are found in the published version quickly after the release, add commits to the draft branch and amend the commit on gh-pages
• Fast-forward master to gh-pages
• If changes are necessary after the release (>1 h), add extra commits to both master and gh-pages.
• Update index
• Create Git tag from the draft branch, e.g. archive/draft1901
• Delete the draft branch
• (opt) Update journal-template.md in docs branch
• (opt) Update this release checklist template in the docs branch
• Start new cycle

Quotes of different people obviously are in different styles. Decide whether to rewrite those quotes to minimze text and to streamline the style, at the cost of losing the original text and possible a bit of feeling that real people like you and me are building Decred.