Who is "Lenny" and why should I do anything for him? [LWN.net]

Who is "Lenny" and why should I do anything for him?

Posted Oct 6, 2008 21:28 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Who is "Lenny" and why should I do anything for him? by jake
Parent article: What you can do for "Lenny"

No, I guess I just expected that one might read the first few words of the blurb and see that it was talking about a Debian release.

Excuse meeeee. I've read the whole thing, not just first few words:

The Debian project is looking for folks to help them kick "Lenny" out the door. To that end, they have created a detailed list of tasks suitable for regular users as well as developers. "The big question is: What can you do, to help release "Lenny" at least in this quarter? That's pretty easy: Fix rc-bugs, take care, that the fixed packages are migrated to "Lenny", do upgrade tests, document problems in the release-notes. Pretty simple, isn't it? Click below for the full list.

What is this "Lenny"? New bugtracker? New installer? May be it's a new version of super-free Browser? Oh, right: I should open the the article to understand what the article excerpt is saying! WTF is this? Right: 100% editing failure. May be buchanmilne is too emotional, but this does not make your failure as editor less glaring.

Codenames must be explained either in title (preferrably) or in article excerpt, not in the article itself, or on the first page of article's website or, god forbid, on the "first result returned by Google" (I've see such justifications too). It's editorial work. If I just want unabridged uncommented stream of announces - I can always add 10'000 RSS links to Google Reader... May be you know what all these codenames mean (I suppose it's part of your work as editor), but readers surely shouldn't know that...

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Who is "Lenny" and why should I do anything for him?

Posted Oct 6, 2008 21:35 UTC (Mon) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

Excuse me, could you explain these confusing terms you used: "WTF" and "RSS"? They should be explained in every post so no one will be misled or confused.

Hmm... Should I include the whole contents of dictionary, too? Which one? Oxford? Webster?

Posted Oct 6, 2008 21:55 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

WTF and RSS are explained in a dictionary (select just "most common" category - usually it's enough). "Lenny" is not. Plus my post is not shown on main page of LWN so it's not so important...

Hmm... Should I include the whole contents of dictionary, too? Which one? Oxford? Webster?

Posted Oct 16, 2008 22:04 UTC (Thu) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link]

And if I google for "Lenny", the first hit explains it. It's not even necessary to google for "Debian Lenny".

Who is "Lenny" and why should I do anything for him?

Posted Oct 7, 2008 11:59 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

First you missed the first sentence that defines what Lenny is.

Second, 'WTF' is not polite and you should keep this kind of words (and their initials) for those sites/lists were people like to rant and insult each other. This is not the case here. Please.

Third, most LWN readers do known who Lenny is: a shepherdess, girlfriend of Woody.

And fourth, for Pete's sake, is that all so important? Why so much rage? Why say "100% editing failure"? Is this not quite out of measure?

C'mon, get a grip.

Who is "Lenny" and why should I do anything for him?

Posted Oct 9, 2008 14:51 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

If you wouldn't scream so much and be even more emotional than buchanmilne, your argument might get more listened to. Just a hint...