proposal for the board: planet fedora != fedora people

[Robyn Bergeron]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Matt Domsch <matt at domsch.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:37:18PM -0400, seth vidal wrote:
>> Hi ,
>>  so planet.fedoraproject.org used to be title 'fedorapeople' b/c it was
>> about the fedora people.
>>
>> So here's the idea:
>>
>> make planet.fedoraproject.org be ONLY about fedora and/or related
>> technologies/events/etc - just enforce a fedora 'tag'.
>>
>> and make:
>> planet.fedoraproject.org/people/ be the anything-goes aggregate.
>
> -1 from me.
>
> I understand the concern raised generally - we want to keep content
> appropriate - the challenge is, this is a societal/community norms
> discussion then.  I presume someone has contacted this particular
> author privately already (likely his Ambassador sponsor; if not, let's
> be sure that happens).
>
> For this technical proposal:
>
> 1) It doesn't solve the problem of inappropriate content in a
> technical way.  Someone could just as easily put a Fedora tag on their
> inappropriate content, and land it on both.
>
> 2) it creates yet-another-place for remarkably similar content, and i
> think we're mighty spread out as it is.
>
> Unless we're going to start having a set of human filters on whatever
> might get aggregated, we're going to occasionally have a problem post.
> But in those few cases, let's try correcting the individuals involved,
> rather than try to police it apriori.
>
> I do agree it would be appropriate to create a set of planet
> guidelines and recommendations, which, if blatently and repeatedly
> broken, may result in loss of aggregation privilages.
>
> Thanks,
> Matt

I think this is a highly reactionary move to a fairly innocent blog
post that is related to another distro.

I think this really shoots us in the collective foot in a number of ways:

#1: People will not know, or not remember, to tag their Fedora-related
articles as Fedora.  Thus, a lot of really good content will get
skipped.

#2: I, like most people I would suspect, do not want to have to read 2
different blogs to see what is going on in the Fedora community.  I
personally enjoy reading what is going on in the lives of people
inside the community that is not Fedora-related.  Getting rid of that
- we might as well just say, we're not friends - we're only interested
in your Fedora content. We're a community. Friends is one of our
-foundations-.  Why would we implement a policy that makes the main
aggregate for all the Fedora community blogs send a message that is
contrary to what we believe?

#3: I think the reasons for doing so are just entirely too
big-brotherish.  Seriously: We've had issues in the past where people
have posted questionable content - and I'll just say Nicu, because I'm
sure he's reading this (HI NICU!) and there's no point in being
subtle, and I think that's the scenario most people are thinking of.
Now, I happen to enjoy Nicu's photos and content and I actively go out
out of my way to read his non-planet postings - which are non-planet
because someone -just talked- to him.  As a -Friend- would.

#4:  We're considering doing this over a post that is not even
-questionable content-. We're doing this because we don't like seeing
an ubuntu logo on our planet feed.  This sends a message that,
basically, your content isn't welcome here because you work in
multiple communities.  Do we not think that that message is going to
backfire terribly?

I'd like to add that currently, on the front page of ubuntu's planet,
RIGHT NOW, is this highly detailed blog post.  Do you think this same
conversation is going on in parallel elsewhere?
http://pthree.org/2010/06/17/using-symantec-netbackp-with-a-fedora-12-live-cd/

I don't happen to think that ubuntu content on our blog is a problem.
Particularly if the same people are posting Fedora content there - or
Debian folks are posting content to all three places - then it becomes
a feature, rather than a problem. I'm not a fan of being known as "the
distro that won't let you talk about other distros," or essentially,
the distro that relegates all non-distro related content to a sub-blog
that nobody ever reads.

-Robyn