Planet material

[William Jon McCann]

Hi Mo,

2009/12/16 Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org>:
> Hi Jon,
>
> William Jon McCann wrote:
>>
>> I think we'd be a little put off if mailing lists, wikis, bugs, or IRC
>> conversations were conducted in many languages at the same time.  For
>> these we've adopted a lingua franca.  I propose we do the same for the
>> "default" Fedora Planet feed.
>
> Many multilingual posters post both in their native tongue and also provide
> an English translation on the bottom. What do you think about those posts
> and their appropriateness for the main planet feed?

Can you link to an example of what you mean?  Without seeing it, it
still sounds a bit noisy.

> As an American I worry because I know in other places being multilingual is
> far more common and folks from such places are part of our community. I
> think what might be nice is across any planets we have, to have a sticky
> control where you check off the languages that you are interested in, and
> you can check off more than one so if I want to read both English and
> Spanish posts on the same page I can. And that setting could be sticky /
> controlled by cookie so I ever only have to click it once per computer I
> read from. (would be nice if the rss URL presented would be modified to
> match my in-page language settings as well.) What do you think about that
> idea?

I think it is very important to both understand and be considerate to
your audience.  I think it is probably more effective to write
different content when directing things at different audiences.  Also,
I'm not sure we want to require configuration of the planet feed -
that may send the wrong message about Fedora too (about decision
making, audience, just works mentality, etc).  I'm really interested
in the defaults.

However, I think we can and should provide places for language
specific feeds.  Probably even linked off the main page.  Similarly we
should also have a way to get to topic specific feeds.

However, we should keep in mind that any of this configuration is not
relevant for people consuming the feeds through reader software (eg.
Google Reader).  We should make sure to provide a good experience for
that too.

> Also, should there even be a main planet feed? Maybe we've outgrown it, same
> as we obviously outgrew the barcamp process at FUDcon Toronto (a good thing,
> so many awesome talks!) Maybe we could re-envision the planet as multiple
> sub-plants that could kind of mirror the topics of the major mailing lists,
> and the front page could be a dashboard of what's going on underneath -
> kinda like the front page of news.google?

I think we need both topic specific feeds and a central square/common
feed.  This is important for fostering a strong sense of community,
shared vision, focus, etc.

> Then... maybe I'm going too nuts here.... but we could take a feed from
> Fedora Insight, which is going to be edited / high-quality content, post
> that up front and center... then have the individual topical planet feeds in
> two or three columns underneath organized by category. Like the latest 2 or
> 3 posts from each topic maybe...

One of the many neat things about open source is that we don't have
the public/private split (or not as much).  Consumers get to pick the
level of detail they are interested in - rather than having the
corporate PR folks do it for them.  The decision is most often made
based on frequency and volume.  Planet Fedora will be fast, noisy,
rambunctious.  My understanding of Fedora Insight is that it will be
moderated and with less frequent updates (bigger chunks).  Both serve
a role and the level of interest (geekiness :) ) will determine which
the consumer will select.  Personally, I'll take both.  Maybe over the
holidays or during the week I'll read only Insight but on the train
I'll try to catch up with Planet.

But I think this is a slightly different than how a lingua franca can
help foster a sense of a single Fedora community on the Planet.

Thanks,
Jon