See comments here How to replace OS X with Ubuntu 20.04 on MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
The 20.04 has been released and the final iso uploaded to ubuntu.com.
Am I missing something? What kind of announcement is needed?
3 Answers
What is the proper moment to stop closing Ubuntu+1 questions?
What kind of announcement is needed?
From our perspective, we don't need an announcement, there is no set threshold in time. Just apply some critical thinking. Is it a question? Can the question be answered? Will the question and today's answers still apply at release?
The question in question asked how to install 20.04 on a mac, on the day of release.
It was fine. It likely would have been fine five months ago.
The "problems specific to development version of Ubuntu should be reported on Launchpad" close reason tries to accomplish a few things:
- Bugs should be reported in the right place. This isn't +1 specific.
- Reduce speculation, eg "Will 20.10 cook my breakfast?"
- No inappropriate wishlisting, etc
We know when a release is going to release. We know the last week or so is pretty much locked down. Many of the big decisions are made well in advance of this. Simply, +1 questions were never automatically off-topic. The only real thing that time changes is the speculative nature that things might change.
It's not the site aim to close every question. Some people trip over themselves scurrying to close and delete as much as possible. Spend some time helping people instead. The application of some critical thought would have helped the OP and saved everybody a lot of waffling on about what constitutes a release announcement.
I can't see the linked question as I don't have enough rep to see deleted questions, so my answer is more general than being about that specific question.
I totally agree with Oli's answer. And I would like to add my 2 cents.
Theoretically, there are a lot of +1 questions that are even answerable a long time before the release is made. But it's the community's decision here to close those questions due to the chance that those answers will become obsolete quite quickly. Which makes sense, and it's something I agree with.
However, when a release is imminent, waiting to the exact second for it to be public in order to stop pressing that close button is counter-productive.
Even more broadly, the close button should not be pressed just because a +1 release is mentioned in a question. IIRC, that was never the decision here. We should always judge if the question is answerable or not.
As an example, check the following Q/A "What is a development branch?". At one point, the question's title was edited to include 20.04 in it. Almost immediately after that edit, the question attracted 2 close votes.
In the last stages of an Ubuntu release, things very rarely change. Changes are mostly regarding bug fixes and security fixes. And if a question was related to such issues, it would be closed as a bug report anyway.
If a question was asked 1 hour ago, and the announcement was made just now, should I have VTC'ed an Ubuntu+1 question if I saw it 10 mins ago, but leave it open if I see it now?
In conclusion and in my opinion, we should be able to properly judge if a question was on topic or not.
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I'm happy to hear that using a new release isn't supposed to automatically mean a question is off-topic. That's not quite the experience I had in the comments from my post here although I sorted that out I think.– WildcardCommented Apr 26, 2020 at 23:48
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1"At one point, the question's title was edited to include 20.04 in it. Almost immediately after that edit, the question attracted 2 close votes." And that's why version should be stripped out of most questions. Agnosticing the questions is more useful long term.– BraiamCommented Apr 27, 2020 at 12:34
Official announcement from the Ubuntu Release Team is the requirement for the Ubuntu News Team.
ie.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2020-April/000256.html
This release was slightly less than ideal because normally (non-COVID-19) the team are all together rather than being remote, and a few less than ideal things occurred. Normally the meeting where the delay or release decision is made has all participants in the room.
ISOs go up very early (so mirrors can get access to them before the release is actually made), and have been up and available for download up to a week before actual release time, eg. Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS and the Ubuntu Core 18 delay, the ISOs for all desktop & server releases (inc. flavors) were deemed frozen a week; though would have been re-spun had bad errors been found (iso.qa.ubuntu.com QA tracking site remained open) so doesn't make a good indication in my opinion.
There were indications on IRC it was being released in the ~10 minutes before I saw the release annoucement, but I feel it should be something concrete or auditable (like Ubuntu Release Team announcement).
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The marketing & other announcements put up on ubuntu.com by non-release team members have gone up before, then been removed/changed or re-posted before, so I'd be wary of ubuntu.com detail (it's ~official when it's there & remains up, but does get removed)– guivercCommented Apr 23, 2020 at 18:08
cating a file on +1 or -60 is the same. Installing procedures has been functionally the same. That question boils down to "how to install ubuntu?". I'm sure even @guiverc would agree.