This is creating confusion even between regular contributors to the project (see @abbe98 comment here OpenRefine 3.7.9 released - #5 by abbe98) to get the latest information. I suspect this is also creating overhead when making a release.
Should we limit the number of pages to maintain? Which one should we keep?
Yes, let's streamline all that!
I propose to get rid of the "Whats New" page on the wiki, replacing it with a redirect to What's new | OpenRefine
Let's also switch to documenting the changes in each patch release independently instead of aggregating it per minor release.
I think it still makes sense to have release notes on the website (more publicly facing). Should the text in the GitHub releases redirect the reader to the website then? One thing to keep in mind is that GitHub relies on usernames in the text of the GitHub release to generate a list of release contributors, which is advertised as such in social media. So if the text is just a redirection, it will look as if the person publishing the release is the only contributor, which is not ideal.
So far I have been using the wiki as a place where to draft release notes - writing them takes quite a bit of time so it's helpful not to have to do that in one go, during the release.
I agree that we can redirect the wiki page to the What's new on the website.
Intuitively, I would not separate the release note from the actual release and, therefore, rely on GitHub as the place to publish the release note. This way, we also keep GitHub native feature to list contributors in each release. The What's New page can list existing releases, provide a brief overview (similar to what is shared in the blog post?) and redirect to each GitHub release for the details.
I've tried to take the feedback above into account for the 3.8 release series but I am not really sure about the result.
For someone who is only upgrading to stable versions and will be updating from 3.7.9 to 3.8.0, the release notes of 3.8.0 don't say anything about the actual changes they should expect:
That's because it only shows the difference between the last release (3.8-beta5) and the new one (3.8.0), which is in this case very small.
See also the "what's new" page on the website:
I have to say this new format does make the release process quite a lot simpler on my side, but is maybe not completely ideal for users…
I've tried to take the feedback above into account for the 3.8 release series but I am not really sure about the result.
For someone who is only upgrading to stable versions and will be updating from 3.7.9 to 3.8.0, the release notes of 3.8.0 don't say anything about the actual changes they should expect:
As a user, that's definitely not what I expect. Beta releases are never seen by most users. When deciding whether to update to 3.7.9, I'm interested in the differences between it and 3.7.8, not 3.7.0. When deciding whether to update to 3.8, I'm interested in the differences from 3.7.latest.