Remove text about "what is not welcome on Planet Drupal" from /about/drupal-planet

Sorry but you don't revert a change that was already agreed upon by webmasters just because you don't like it. We discuss then change based on results of that discussion. I've reverted the page for now.

It is not about replacing but not removing what is there without further discussion, right?

Correct.

Is your assumption that the rules were set up without discussion? I'm seeing a large amount of issues on the webmaster queue ongoing to discuss different parts of the rules for quite some time now (with various people participating, not just webmasters), and it does not seem like that the current rules were instituted lightly or without discussion. Which parts lacked open discussion? (Not that you've opened this issue to discuss that, mind you).

Yep, because I implied that your voice or opinion doesn't matter. The only thing I have a problem with is making changes to a policy page that was agreed on by multiple webmasters involved with the Planet. I have nothing more to say.

If there is an ongoing thread, why not post there? I mean, you removed the whole rules section, which makes it look like its debated as a whole (is it?). If there is an issue for the topic you debate, why not post there?

-1 on making the change selected in the original post.

And -1 for anyone - part of the webmaster team, part of the community, part of a shop who contributes back regularly - unilaterally undoing the work of people who have put the time in to reach consensus around an issue.

A strongly held opinion, voiced loudly, forcefully, and frequently doesn't make it right.

+1 for leaving this section unchanged until tempers cool and this can actually be discussed rationally.

What is not welcome on Planet Drupal is already reported in http://drupal.org/about/drupal-planet.

@kiamlaluno: the point of this issue is to discuss whether or not those guidelines meet the needs of the community. At least a couple of folks here have suggested that some of them (e.g., the "no job announcements" rule) may be overly restrictive, and we're discussing whether or not they need to be changed. In the meantime, I'd suggest that any webmasters/site maintainers take a gentle hand and use their judgment when reviewing Planet feeds. The last thing we want is to have community members who regularly contribute good content to Planet feel like they're being threatened with expulsion because of one or two job postings.

Moving this issue back to "Active".

@gdemet: Thank you for clarifying the purpose of this report; I guess the title confused me.

I am changing the title, as it seems to suggest we don't have rules about what is welcome in Planet Drupal. I am also removing the who part from the title, as everybody is welcome in Planet Drupal; the only thing we ask for is to add articles that follow some rules, but we don't have limit to who can have a feed on Planet Drupal.

As alternative to change what is welcome on Planet Drupal is to change the part about what to do when a feed on Planet Drupal contains an article that don't follow our rules. Clearly, one or two articles can be tolerated; when the articles are more than 2 or 3 in row, we could send a message to the user who requested to add the feed to Planet Drupal.

kiamlaluno - what kind of review do you want?

I'm paraphrasing, but the general perspective from the Drupal Association is that "Drupal Association is responsible for keeping the servers online and the software running well, the community is responsible for deciding policies."

I still think that this is the type of problem that is best solved by making more categories of feeds on the planet, including:
1. hiring announcements
2. press releases
3. product advertisements
4. service provider profiles

and anything else that people want to post, that is relevant to Drupal, relevant to doing business with Drupal, yet likely to upset someone who thinks that the Planet should just be code snippets and howto videos.

@greggles: I removed a tag added by Alex UA; I personally don't think that the Drupal association is responsible for such decisions (except where the responsibility of the Drupal Association is clearly stated, like for the hosting directory).

I personally think that creating different feeds as reported by robertDouglass in #20 could be a good idea.

I agree, this is a community matter, and not something within the mission of the Drupal Association.

There is more discussion on all this in the earlier issues:

#928092: Update and clarify Planet Drupal guidelines

#993060: Add a Job postings category to aggregator and Drupal planet

I think it's just simply easy to "oops", make a job posting, tag it Drupal because it's for a Drupal programmer, and to the feed it goes. I've certainly messed up with duplicate or "Drupal in mention only" posts. Making more categories is just going to end up with cross-posting. Remind and shame people when they mess-up. None of this discussion is going to clean undesired posts out of Planet until each post is moderated which I am not in favor of.

It's a webmaster issue. There is no better group of people to discuss the issue. It makes as much sense for the DA to give a ruling here as it does for the security team to do the same. The DA is just a group of people that manage the Drupal piggy bank, not make policy.

(Maybe somebody didn't read what I have written too.)

As I said, there are no rules against who can have a feed in Planet Drupal, nor would we like to have them; the only rules we have are about what is welcome to Planet Drupal.
If you find any rule that report who can have their feed on Planet Drupal, please report exactly where you find those rules; if you would like to debate who can have their own feed on Planet Drupal, then you are adding a barrier more nobody else is willing to add.

Alex: I think you've misunderstood that the role the Drupal Association has taken.

We have indeed funded projects that have turned out to be too big for a community coordinated effort to handle. To date, we've funded:

1) The actual redesign. We've learned that design is difficult to crowdsource.
2) The implementation of the redesign. For about a year, we attempted to get the community to implement it. And it was working, but at a rate that would have likely had the project completed in roughly 2014. (Note: That's a guess. Amazon could probably tell you what progress was really like. Suffice it to say, it was going very slowly because a lack of management caused blocking issues constantly).
3) The migration from CVS to git. This is directly piggy-bank related, in that it has a LOT to do with the hardware and infrastructure.

Overall, the Association has been very clear that, aside from actual legal issues involving trademarks, wordmarks and copyright, actual software used and deployed, policy of this nature is left to the Drupal Community. In other words, the webmasters.

At no point has the Drupal Association tried to create policy regarding who can post what, except for the financially related services and advertising areas. We do not police the forums, we do not police the feeds. The community does that, and in general, the community has excelled.

deekayen is actually pretty spot on. There seems to be some confusion in #27. But the DA website is pretty clear on this:

http://association.drupal.org/about/faq#complaints
"I'm upset at something that happened on a drupal.org site. Can I get help from the Association?
Drupal.org sites are managed and maintained by teams of dedicated volunteers who have responsibility for content and for creating and enforcing site policies. The Association entrusts day to day site decisions to these teams and avoids wading in."

And yes, at http://association.drupal.org/about, mission #1 is maintaining the hardware and software infrastructure of Drupal.org. That means funding things like new servers, RAM, the Drupal.org redesign, and the CVS -> Git migration, which clearly fall under our purview. The day-to-day site decisions and policies, on the other hand, clearly fall to the community-led teams. Some members of said teams are also DA members, but those folks are wearing multiple hats, not acting as DA representatives.

Hope that helps clarify the boundaries a bit.

it is about whether we should be specifying who/what *CANNOT* be on the feed

As I said, nobody else is willing to put rules about who can have a feed in Planet Drupal; you can be Chinese, French, wear eyeglasses, see through the walls, and you are allowed to have your feed on Planet Drupal, if the feed content follows what reported in the requirements.
It is also clear that there is consensus on the fact we should be specifying what cannot be on the feed; the topic is rather what is not welcome on Planet Drupal.

Now, back to the issue at hand... I totally agree with Alex U.A.'s editing of the post and welcome the end to the stupidly restricted planet. It irks me in many ways that people can't deal with more posts than they're personally interested in. I'm personally interested in every job posting, press release, company advertisement, and self promotion that people write. That's how I stay abreast of where we are as a community. If others don't like it, they should make categories and channels for Planet posts, and webmasters should assume the role of taxonomists, not censors.

Robert, you'll want to look up what censorship is. You got it wrong.

Gerhard, I always value your opinion, but I'm too dense; I'll need you to elaborate.

# censor - ban: forbid the public distribution of ( a movie or a newspaper)

Banning job postings, press releases, and other "business" (subtext: non-community oriented) material from the Planet seems like censorship in my mind.

# censor - ban: forbid the public distribution of (a movie or a newspaper)

Considering that the feeds are hosted on third-party sites, nobody is forbidding the public distribution, which would mean to not allows those sites to publish the articles that are not considered suitable for Planet Drupal (I guess it would mean to force them to delete such articles).

Here's my 2 cents as a webmaster/site maintainer:

No press releases

I don't have a problem with press releases if they're Drupal-related.

No "Oh I am having fun" posts that don't have much relevance for others. It's great you're having fun with Drupal, but unless what you're sharing can actually help others, or provide great interest, it's not appropriate Planet material.

This should probably be reworded slightly; I think the point is that we don't want spammy or off-topic posts, but if someone wants to post something for fun, like a picture of a Druplicon jack-o-lantern, it should be allowed.

No job announcements. Everyone is hiring. There are better places to post that.

I don't have a problem with job announcements, but as the owner of a Drupal shop that's hiring, I also recognize that I have a bias here.

No hiring announcements.

See above.

No posts about something else that just mention Drupal in passing. See requirements regarding Planet-specific feed.

We should reword this; I think the point here is no off-topic posts, which I agree with.

No site launches without some sort of narrative, case study or other aspect from which people might learn something.

I'd make an exception here for very well-known or high profile sites. If someone wants to announce that they just launched whitehouse.gov in Drupal, I don't think they should have to wait to write a case study first.

Site must not appear to be in violation of the Drupal Trademark policy. If we think it's in violation, then we won't include it unless we're sure it's not (e.g., the site demonstrates that it has an explicit license).

Dries controls the trademark; it's not the webmaster's team responsibility to enforce it, and I don't think we should put ourselves in that position.

@robert: in addition to what Kiam said, censorship usually is understood to mean the involvement of a country and not a private entity.

I doubt that the censorship discussion is fruitful in any regard...

About the problem at hand here: I remember my starting time with drupal very well and to this day I enjoy the planet feed as a very useful way to explore what the community is up to. I get a sense about "trendy" topics and the state of the community and, very conveniently, good tutorials too.

I don't mind job announcements, hiring statements and launch statements. In fact most times I find them interesting. Same goes for press releases which might provide information I would never stumble upon otherwise.
I share the sentiment with Robert that additional content in the feed shouldn't offend anybody because there is no real problem attached with it. At worst you don't care but a bunch of others might.

Even if you consider that to be a "real" problem: How relevant is the problem, i.e. how often has the feed contained offending content? Do we really need a police to enforce the policy?

Referencing the infrequency of this happening in #26, and given how long this has been open with as many people weighing in, perhaps I might be so bold as to wrap it up.

Alex, I recommend you make an attempt to distance yourself from the conversation and actually listen to yourself.

If this is an issue about the content guidelines for Planet, I think it should stay open, as there is (in my view) no clear consensus yet about what those should be. Several webmasters and prominent community members have raised concerns about one or more of the existing guidelines.

If this is an issue about whether the Drupal Association getting involved, the definition of censorship, or Alex's personality, then I don't see any of those things going anywhere productive and this issue should be closed.

I'll post a topic.

Yet another place, yet another thread? I note that this issue is already a duplicate of the original issue, #928092: Update and clarify Planet Drupal guidelines. Can we focus this conversation in one place rather than scattering it all over?

I'm with Laura... I just found this one, too. Didn't realize this crazy issue was in two places.

Michelle

Seems like everything has been said here. Let's try to focus the discussion on the actual guidelines in #928092: Update and clarify Planet Drupal guidelines, that is still very very much open.