Formalize requirements and policies for the Drupal Planet

I've taken to adding Planet feeds recently. As part of that I make sure that the feed being supplied is "Drupal tagged" and ask that these feeds be Drupal specific. So far this has gone well.

I agree that maybe a clean out is needed and would be happy to remove feeds that have not update for some time. We just need to agree on what that time is here first.

Regarding http://drupal.org/aggregator/sources/155 content wise it does appear to be Drupal orientated. So I'm not entirely sure I understand your reasons for quoting this feed in particular.

Since I was in the channel when he mentioned it, I'm pretty sure it's about quality, not quantity. It seems like anyone that asks is added. Is there any sort of check beyond that the content is Drupal? I know I haven't asked to have mine added because I didn't think the quality was high enough. But seeing the flood of blogs being added, I've been tempted to throw mine in too. LOL

Michelle

Well, I signed up and signed off (due to off-topic-ness if such a phrase exists) only to sign up again recently since if I'm adding feeds it's only right I take them.

Being off topic is one thing and is a main reason I take the feed, to act on it should some feeds shove out none Drupal content.

But for quality. Well, yes and no. I agree that there are imho feeds which aren't the strongest on quality. The problem, where do you draw the line? Michelle, for example, I'd really be happy to read your blog because knowing you I'm sure you have something worth saying/reading. Whether the grammar is good or what not, imho I wouldn't care. It's whats being said.

So, with regard to "quality", I'm not sure it's so easy to rate. There are plenty of "self appointed grammar police[1]" out there already, should we be joining them?

[1]
http://stupidfilter.org/main/
http://sagp.miketaylor.org.uk/
(and I'm sure Google would find plenty more)

Oh, I wasn't worried about grammar. Mine isn't that bad and I'd hate for that to be a requirement due to all the Drupal people with English as a second language. In my case, I'm hesitant because I put things up sporadically and they tend to be tutorials rather than blogs. I was considering it because it would be handy way to let people know when I have a new tutorial done, but do we want a feed that only has an entry once every month or two?

I don't know what chx's issue with that particular blog is and I don't want to be in a position to judge others' blogs. Which is probably why everyone gets in. No one wants to be the judge. :)

Michelle

Any random Joe gets in the Planet. I expect the planet feeds to be beneficial to the community. CVS accounts and Drupal services have rules why not blogs. The one I linked is --sorry do not want to offend anyone but I am known to be quite blunt anyways-- is basically the whinings of any random Drupal n00b.

I found the entries in the mention feed rather interesting. More interesting than rants about pgsql...

Also note that it is called "Planet" rather than "space station".

Ok, I understand that and to some extent on a personal level I'd agree. However, I don't think you can shut-out people because you don't like the content/style/grammar/whatever.

How about this. We have topics for forums. Why not have topics for feeds (yes, another/more category/categories) such as "Drupal Startup", "Drupal Expert Diary", etc. Then you take the feed that most suits what you want to read.

As it stands, the Planet does what is says on the tin, it's like one big "forum" where everyones posts go.

I found the entries interesting as well.

I think this should be handled on a person-to-person basis to begin with (i.e. leave a comment saying "this doesn't seem that important to me" or my pet peeve "instead of posting this howto/patch/module on your own site why not add or at least link to the handbook docs/issue with your patch attached/project page for your contributed module").

I can't think of any rules we could state for this and nobody else has been able to so far so marking by design for now.

mmmh, not to sure. do we need rules for everything?

otoh no rules lead to what we have now, bad blogs like mine and everybody's in and no-one ever gets out (lots of feed have had no content, I recently cleaned some 10+ non existing URL's)

I think that Dag Wiers is a very high standing OSS (RPM) figure and Kris Buytaert is world famous for his XenSource knowledge. Yet both do less or nothing for the Drupal community apart from having a Drupal blog, unless I missed some big things they added to the community.

So dropping blogs /like these/ -and I know mine is next on the line, bad grammar etc- is something I welcome and having more rules is *really* needed. Otherwise the feed becomes a "drupalshop x" promotion aggregation point.

Not changing "by design" but I think it should be "active".

Not changing "by design" but I think it should be "active".

Um... You closed it, actually. :) Putting it back to by design but feel free to change to active if that's what you meant.

Michelle

I'm not a site admin, but I thought I'd chime in here, since I've noticed non-Drupal posts under Planet before, and I simply filed an issue and it was promptly taken care of (http://drupal.org/node/181212). While rules/guidlines for adding a feed, would be an excellent idea, posting an issue on inappropriate feeds does seem to work well in the mean time.

Also, would the new rules apply to new feeds only, or to all existing feeds as well?

For the people who want to have this active - can you please state a positive rule?

i.e. so far people have been giving examples of things that they generally dislike. I'd like to know if there is such a thing as a rule that we could state before we re-open it. Otherwise, if you dislike a post that was added to planet, comment directly or raise an issue.

In general, if the posts are not consistently about Drupal, I will not drop them but move them to Drupal Talk category. Planet Drupal is _NOT_ a support forum. It originated to centralize and aggregate things related to Drupal, Drupal development and the community.

To many 'blurb' type posts, tend towards a lack of content and fill the feed with essentially advertising and page rank value. Spelling has never been a criteria (if that were so I'd be in trouble), content has. There are several that have been added that I've had concerns with recently.

A better option may be to add some additional categories and sort of the feeds differently.

I think the only rule has to be "relevance to Drupal". Someone posting that they upgraded their blog to Drupal is not relevant. Someone posting the same, AND providing a trick/tip/bug is relevant. Someone posting a tutorial, an article, even an opinion about happenings in Drupaldom is relevant.

It just has to be "about Drupal".

Regarding resources on blogs that have not posted anything in a year, well, how much resources is that really sucking up? Can we quantify that from the logs? I don't think it is that huge. Perhaps we can increase the interval where Drupal.org polls others site for all sites and be done with it.

I think the default is 1 hour. When I add, I always change it to 6 hour or something.

@sepeck

There are several that have been added that I've had concerns with recently.

Since it's me that's added the most recent one's I'm inclined to hold off doing any more for the time being until I know why. I did take a look and check those I added were "Drupal related" and tagged accordingly. If you had concerns why no posts on the relevant issues?

@everyone

I think what chx is saying is, "why does this end up on the Planet" --> http://www.krisbuytaert.be/blog/?q=node/530

If ever there was an example, for me at least, this is one where some clear guidance on what is a Drupal Blog and what isn't could do with clarifying. Since it's obvious "there are concerns" and frankly I'm not in a hurry to add anymore until I know what the concerns are I think this ticket should still be active and am marking it thus. Otherwise the webmaster issue queue is just going to fill with unanswered requests to get on the Planet.

Re-opened long ago. No further input so I think enough time has passed to see this go to bed.

We definitely need a clear handbook page for this, because people are asking for it.
#322666-4: Can I have my site added to Planet Drupal

My quick draft:
1. What is Planet Drupal?

2. guidelines/requirements for being included on Planet
feed on "planet drupal" term
don't violate Drupal trademark
post your Drupal code under GPL
You should enable anonymous comments, or the login with Drupal.org ID. We would like to correct you if you write a bad (or insecure) code, or spread false information. We do not want to register on every Drupal blog, and definitely do not want to search your contact information..

3. What should not be posted on Planet.
The post should be related to Drupal.
It is still possible to post advertisements and job offers, this could change in the future.. It is forbidden to post "pay 50 bucks for website development" type job advertisements. There are better places for that.

You should check your teaser. It should not be longer than ?50 rows. Long posts does not look good on Planet.
Do not post digg (and similar) buttons to planet.

4. How can you apply?

"You should enable anonymous comments, or the login with Drupal.org ID [...]"

It's nice when people do but I don't see this as being mandatory. I don't think we should be telling people how to handle access on their sites. If a post is harmful, we can pull the feed from Planet.

"You should check your teaser. It should not be longer than ?50 rows. Long posts does not look good on Planet."

As much as I'd love this since I actually read it on drupal.org, this one won't go over. It seems that most people read it via RSS and they complain when people use teasers. I've grudgingly switched to not using teasers on Planet posts because that's become the norm.

"Do not post digg (and similar) buttons to planet."

Why not? I don't use it, myself, but, in general, I don't think someone should be forced to remove it just because they tag a post for Planet. Remember, these posts are on peoples' sites as well, they aren't specific Planet postings. So we need to take care to not get too demanding on what people are allowed to put in them.

Michelle

I'm with Michelle on all her comments.

I don't mean it to be mandatory, just it should be written down in the handbook page.
"harmful" isn't really good definition. That should be clearly defined what harmful means..
Can you pull the feed from Planet, when it contains a misinformation and you can't comment on it?
#261198-12: require commenting for blogs aggregated in planet.drupal.org
Do you want to search for the email address and write an email every time when you see something like that?
When (the feed is pulled down and) the post is corrected, can you include the feed on the Planet again without a new request?
There are many questions, and no rules..

they complain when people use teasers

ok, so we need to improve the aggregator module to create two types of RSS feed, because there won't be a consensus..

Drupal planet represents Drupal, we should care..

Since I've come under criticism for adding feeds to the planet I'm subscribing to this. In my opinion, not having comments enabled is note a reason to drop from the planet.

You should enable anonymous comments, or the login with Drupal.org ID. We would like to correct you if you write a bad (or insecure) code, or spread false information. We do not want to register on every Drupal blog, and definitely do not want to search your contact information..

I'm against requirements as to how people manage their own sites.

Also I am 100% against any sort of policing of Planet posts where "we would like to correct you" is the mindset. This is the blogosphere. There are lots of things to disagree with in the blogosphere, and many ways to express your disagreement.

You should check your teaser. It should not be longer than ?50 rows. Long posts does not look good on Planet.

A few thoughts here:

1 - The teasers vs. full feeds debate is immense out there. Do some Googling to see some very excellent arguments on both sides. I fall on the full feeds side, because in my own feed-reader usage, I rarely click through on teaser posts, and therefore rarely link to any sites that offer only teasers. By offering only teasers in RSS, you in fact risk reducing your site's relevance.

2 - This gets back to policing how people manage their own sites, which I'm against. If we don't like how content is presented on the Planet, it's up to the Planet to address.

3 - My personal preference is for the full posts on the Planet. I like reading it right there. And if it's a post I'm not interested in, I scroll down, which I don't feel is an onerous task.

Do not post digg (and similar) buttons to planet.

I don't know why not. This makes no sense to me.

I am sorry, but I DO would like to correct you if you blog something like this on the Planet: "uc_review module is a d.o. review for Ubercart."
There are too many bullshit posts about Drupal already. If you blog on the Planet, and you write a bullshit, and I can't comment on it (can't correct you), then I will be angry.. I don't like to be angry.. So I need a simple rule for this.

I would accept a solution, where we change the aggregation to node aggregation such as feedAPI, where it would be possible to correct the teasers for the unified look..

about the digg button. Once I saw a button on the planet, and it was absolutely distractive for me. I can't find the post..

I think about planet as a first page of a newspaper.. And some things just does not fit into this image..

Robert, thanks for subscribing. I don't think you are under criticism, your contributions to Drupal planet are numerous. It's the ability to manage feeds effectively that is under criticism. e.g. notifying authors their feeds have been added to planet, dealing with authors who repeatedly have opinion pieces that misstate obvious facts with difficult recourse to notify them of corrections.

This week I have had to chase down at least three feeds for corrections for formating, facts, and terminology. It's time consuming. I think it's worth doing, having an engaging dialogue around a product is outstanding marketing.

I just want to make it easier to deal with the edge cases.

Kieran

I would accept a solution, where we change the aggregation to node aggregation such as feedAPI, where it would be possible to correct the teasers for the unified look... The solution has little to do with FeedAPI, and everything to do the pdo theme - truncate the posts down to what you would find acceptable ONLY on view - leave the RSS alone (meaning that if pdo subscribes to a full post feed, and I subscribe to pdo, I would get the full post feed as I desire). Thus, there'd be the "normal" planet (raw HTML, and raw RSS, as it is now), and "Pasqualle's planet" - a specific custom theme that would trunc things down to your particular resolution and monitor's definition of a "row".

The takehome value is this: to make /everyone/ happy with what they visually receive, pdo would ALWAYS have to subscribe to a full-post RSS feed - you can't invent data, but you can visually trunc it down. Some people want that truncing, some don't (like myself).

As for the whole "policing of posts" I'm, again, with laura and Michelle: if there's an incorrect fact, say the right fact louder. The whole concept of "well, if I can't leave a comment on the post, then PDO is hurt for it" is utterly ridiculous. Most people read /The Planet/, not specifically the individual blogs that make up The Planet. Correcting a post by responding in comment on that blog will /never make it back to the Planet/, and you're relying on the fact that people will find a post either a) interesting enough to clickthrough to the whole thing based on the teaser, where the incorrect fact could lie [and if the incorrect fact doesn't lie in the teaser, then it's not on The Planet, so it's irrelevant] or b) will hit the full post on the originating blog, after reading the full post in their feed reader anyways.

Also, most external pdo-subscribing feed readers will /never clearly show a corrected but now-in-the-past post/, so admonishing someone to correct their original posts with the right facts is only useful to search engines, not The Planet. The only way for you to literally "correct an error" in the minds of pdo's readers is to make a brand new post, refuting the fact. Said post doesn't have to be on the original blog: it merely has to be aggregated by The Planet.

I don't have a blog.. No, I don't want to start a blog for correcting bullshit with shouting the fact louder..

I simply want correctness, and not just yell to the planet that this blogger does not have a simple clue about Drupal..

I'd like to get this formalized and make this process a little easier for people that want to add their blogs or sites can review the requirements instead of me having to tell them every time. I'm fully interested in basically being a 'Planet' maintainer at this point if it's ok with the community. I've already been taking charge of reviewing addition requests and reviewing obsolete feeds for removal. I'd like to get this put into a formal handbook page and add a link/block on the Drupal Planet page with something like:

Want to include your blog or site in Drupal Planet? See the requirements and instructions for adding your feed to the Planet.

Adding feeds to the Planet:

1. There must be Drupal-relevant and mature content (more than one or two posts). The occasional off-topic post is fine as long as the community would find it valuable, but for the most part, try and keep it Drupal-related.
2. Feed must pass source code validation since core's aggregator module is very strict about parsing code.
3. Site must not violate the Drupal Trademark policy.
4. We highly recommend, but not require a specific 'Drupal Planet' tag feed to be used. Too many times we've seen non-blog-entry content get tagged with 'Drupal' (say in a portfolio) and it gets aggregated. Using a specific tag would help prevent these cases because common sense would say that people actively have to decide whether to add this tag or not since it has consequence. But again, this should be a strong recommendation, not a requirement. Otherwise it must be either a 'Drupal' tag feed or if there is no doubt there will not be non-Drupal-related content, the site's main feed.
5. We highly recommend, but not require that anonymous comments be enabled for the content being aggregated. There are lots of things interesting, so why not let us be able to continue the conversation on your site with everyone else? People concerned about spam have plenty of options, but again, not a requirement.

Conditions for removal or temporary suspension from the Planet:

• Violations of the Drupal Trademark: removal.
• Spam, hacked site, or offensive posts: suspension and notify author.
• Off-topic posts: use common sense. If it's development-related and would be valued by community, no worries. If not, warn author via comment on site or e-mail. For repeated occurances, suspension and notify author. Also be sure to encourage authors to create a 'Drupal Planet' specific tag.
• Site no longer works or no longer Drupal specific: removal.
• Site hasn't been updated in a year: set feed refresh interval to '1 day'.
• Site hasn't been updated in two years: removal.

Note, suspensions and removals should always have a 'Drupal Planet' webmasters issue created so we can log what action was taken, when, and by whom.

For administrators adding feeds to the Planet:

• For most feeds, please set the default feed refresh interval to 3 hours. Only for feeds that are obviously highly-valuable and important to the community (aka Dries' blog) should be set to no less than every 1 hour.
• The name of the feed should be the person's name if it is written by one person, the company's name for a multi-blogging company. No taglines.

These look great to me. Thanks for thinking this through and putting it in words. We will have a few existing feeds to clean up as a result of this.

"Site hasn't been updated" - does it mean any new content? I guess that rule should be based on Drupal planet specific posts..

Should "site" be replaced by feed? :

Site no longer works or no longer Drupal specific: removal.
Site hasn't been updated in a year: set feed refresh interval to '1 day'.
Site hasn't been updated in two years: removal.

I'm a little nervous about "Site must not violate the Drupal Trademark policy."

I like the idea but my understanding is that something really can't be said to violate the policy until a court has ruled on it or some other agreement reached by the parties.

We could rephrase it to "Site must not appear to be in violation of the trademark policy" or something like that. I approve of including some caveat of "if we think it's in violation, then we won't include it unless we're sure it's not, eg, the site demonstrates that it has an explicit license."

I'd also suggest that we add a line about how content submitted via the feed should be unique and not contain boilerplate copy that appears on every post (as came up not too long ago with Volacci's feed).

What do folks think about encouraging people not to submit full posts to the Planet feed if they're extraordinarily long? Currently, there's no character limits to how much content can be submitted to Planet, and we don't really enforce this, but I know there's some times when folks have submitted a really long tutorial post, for example, when really just an introductory summary encouraging people to "read more" if they're interested would have sufficed. I don't think this should be aggressively enforced, but to me it's a question of just reminding folks to keep others in mind when writing and submitting content that will show up on the Planet, especially now that it aggregates so many more feeds than it did in the past.

I think you'll have trouble getting consensus on that. I used to trim my Planet posts because I thought it was a courtesy. Then I found out that it's pretty rare to read it via the web like I do. Most people read it in feed readers and they want the whole post so they don't have to click through. I guess I'm an oddball in that I frequently go to the site anyway, even if it's a full post, because I like to see what other posts are there and maybe click on an ad as a thank you.

Michelle

@Michelle: you are not alone, I do the same. you just asked the wrong group of people.. our planet page is really ugly..

I don't think it's a good idea forcing people to not post long posts on Planet Drupal.
I think the posts should be useful, and if the post needs to be long to be useful, then long posts are welcome. I don't think 100 shorts posts are more useful of 50 longer posts.

@KiamLaLuno: How does sending a teaser out on the feed make it a less useful post? It's not like we're asking people to change the content, just set a teaser break.

Michelle

As a frequent reader who uses a RSS reader teasers are really annoying. One big advantage is that full posts they get cached in offline readers. I could not support a recommendation we encourage people to post short posts. If the idea is to clean up the way planet displays on d.o then we can certainly do that in other ways. For my usage of Planet those who send teasers rarely get much of a read as I do a lot of offline reading and rarely remember to go back and look at a full post.

And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we force anyone do to anything - I definitely recognize the value of having full posts appear in RSS readers, but like Michelle and Pasqualle I also primarily do my Planet reading from the Web site, and get irritated when I have to scroll through long posts to get to content I'm interested in, which is why I made my suggestion.

That said, it sounds like this is probably a technical issue that could be addressed by changing the way that the Planet page displays the feed content and thus is probably not appropriate for a policy discussion. Sorry if I temporarily derailed the conversation!

I agree with the sentiments that there should be a generally hands-off approach to feeds with regards to format and length. I appreciate being able to read entire posts on the Planet, and can easily scroll through even the longest posts that don't interest me.

However, I wonder at some content that does get into the Planet.

For example, today there is OStatic's post http://ostatic.com/blog/college-newspapers-to-get-wordpress-mojo which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with Drupal. It's about Wordpress. I have nothing against Wordpress, mind you, but this is "Planet Drupal," not "Planet Drupal and Wordpress" or "Planet Open Source Web Software."

The post in question also has links to 9 other items that are not part of the post content, which is a bit much. I'm not against a link to a related post that is to the point, but this is something else.

I think I would recommend changing 'strongly recommend a drupal planet tag' to requiring one. I don't think there's any down side to forcing posters to at least contemplate whether or not a post is truly planet-appropriate.