Re: Planet posting policy

Hi

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:59, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> We currently have a strict posting policy for planet.postgresql.org
>> (http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Planet_PostgreSQL), which has been
>> applied in such a way that it prevents users posting anything to their
>> syndicated blogs which may be remotely considered to be advertising.
>> This has tripped up a number of our regular contributors in the past,
>> including some senior community members who have posted technical
>> content about their work which happens to be on commercial products
>> around PostgreSQL.
>>
>> I'd like to propose relaxing this policy (or perhaps the
>> interpretation of it) to allow useful content to be posted that
>> happens to be centered around commercial products, whilst being
>> careful to avoid pure advertising content which we certainly do not
>> want (and should continue to be posted as news or pgsql-announce
>> articles).
>>
>> The current policy has the following notes guiding on its interpretation:
>>
>> ---
>> The primary test here is whether the information provided would be of
>> some use even to people who have no interest in the commercial product
>> mentioned. Consider what your entry would look like if all references
>> to the product were removed. If there's no useful PostgreSQL content
>> left after doing that, that post is an ad.
>> ---
>>
>> I'd like to suggest changing that to something like the following:
>>
>> ---
>> The primary test here is whether the information provided could be
>> considered pure advertising. Consider what the article would look like
>
> I don't like the use of "pure advertising". That makes it go overboard
> in the other direction instead - it's too easy to argue that almost
> *anything* isn't *pure* advertising...

OK.

>> if all references to any products were removed. If there is technical
>> content remaining that may be considered interesting to those working
>> with or around PostgreSQL, or the post is in some way describing the
>> "state of the art" (as related to PostgreSQL), then it is suitable for
>
> I'm not sure what the "state of the art" part is actually supposed to
> mean? As in, what does it actually add on top of the already bbeing
> interesting to those working with or around postgres?

I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
in technical detail.

>> syndication on Planet. In contrast, if all the remains is a list of
>> features with no technical discussion around their implementation,
>> then that is not suitable for syndication.
>> ---
>
> Should we perhaps also add something about referring to things that
> are IP protected, such as patented technologies, that we don't really
> want people posting about?

Sure.

>> I'm not wed to that wording - in fact I'm sure we can do better.
>> However, I hope the intent is clear. Whilst we have had one or two
>> cases where pure advertising has been removed from Planet, their have
>> also been cases where potentially interesting posts have had to be
>> removed due to the strictness of the policy interpretation, which is
>> unfortunate for everyone.
>
> While I don't disagree with relaxing the policies a bit, I only recall
> a single instance of this actually happening recently, and in that
> case it would've also failed the new wording above. Do you have some
> examples? (if you don't want to post those publically for obvious
> reasons, feel free to just remind me personally or the closed
> moderators list about those cases, so we are not missing that
> information)

The cases I'm thinking of probably include the one you're thinking of,
however I thought we blocked two posts from different authors on
essentially the same subject. Maybe I'm misremembering though, and we
let one of them pass.

-- 
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company