Re: Non-personal blogs on Planet - Mailing list pgsql-www

(what did you do to your MUA, it completely broke gmails ability to
reply with quotes :/)


On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 03:40:25PM +0100, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
> On 26/02/2020 09:31, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 3:26 AM Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <ads@pgug.de> wrote:
> > > On 26/02/2020 00:58, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
> > > 
> > > On 2/25/20 6:50 PM, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
> > > 
> > > On 26/02/2020 00:39, Vik Fearing wrote:
> > > 
> > > On 26/02/2020 00:27, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
> > > 
> > > On 2/24/20 9:01 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
> > > 
> > > The case I'm interested in, is allowing conferences to post as
> > > themselves and not as any particular organizer.
> > > 
> > > One of the main reasons we have the policy in place is to ensure there
> > > is a person attached to the content. It does help to reduce the risk of
> > > Planet becoming an advertising/spam feed and IMV, it helps to drive
> > > higher quality content knowing that someone has to put their name on
> > > what is being syndicated.
> > > 
> > > That's a long way of saying that I'm -1 for changing the policy :)
> > > 
> > > Hmm.  Do we not have a way of removing problematic blogs from planet?
> > > We should fix that, and then we can revisit this policy.
> > > 
> > > Indeed posts can already be removed, and so can entire blogs. There
> > > is an anti-spam policy in place.
> > > 
> > > Instead of fighting spam with "tie content to persons", I rather see a
> > > content policy. Not as strict as postings to -announce, but something
> > > which can limit what can be posted, and how often.
> > > 
> > > I'm more in favor of this. My biggest concern is the moderation burden
> > > by just allowing anyone to post on behalf of a conference. The turnover
> > > point that Christophe made actually heightens that concern (and I do
> > > understand it from the other side as well, it is certainly convenient to
> > > have people write content without having to register a new blog every year).
> > > 
> > > (...though OTOH, I believe the pgeu software does allow for this)
> > > 
> > > Right now, if someone plays by the established rules, nothing prevents
> > > this person from posting about every single minor release of a tool.
> > > Heck, it's not even against policy to post every commit message as
> > > a blog post. Clearly the existing policy/strategy is only good as long
> > > as no one starts using loop holes.
> > > 
> > > (Great, now everyone knows and moderating is going to be that much
> > > harder :P)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Why? Nothing to moderate, it's all valid content ;-)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I don't see why this policy can't be expanded to allow certain content
> > > posted under, let's say, community accounts. This can be conferences
> > > and PostgreSQL related tools. That should already be the majority.
> > > 
> > > I'd be in favor for this, with the right policy. Most, if not all, of
> > > the content policies are in place, so I would go with one related to the
> > > frequency of blog posts. The goal would be to ensure that, much like
> > > -announce, we keep the content coming through Planet balanced. We don't
> > > want it to be dominated by articles coming from event blogs, but
> > > likewise ensure community events have good visibility.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Traditionally posting frequency on Planet is higher than on -announce.
> > > 
> > > The problem I see is two-fold: conferences, and projects/tools. Don't think
> > > that anything else needs a non-personal account, certainly not companies.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I don't have a good idea how to policy tools. How about:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Non-personal accounts for PostgreSQL related tools can post about major
> > > version changes, bugfix releases, and content directly related to the project
> > > itself. All other content (as example: tuning, configuration, best practices, ...)
> > > need to be posted from a personal account.
> > So if they want to make an announcement of a new feature as well as a
> > tutorial on how to set it up. They have to split that in two?
> 
> No, and as I mentioned above, the list is meant as a starting
> point, not as a final proposal. If something is not covered in the
> list, there are a couple ways:
> 
>  * It's a clear violation and the guidelines already have a policy for
>    violations in place
>  * It's something overlooked, and the policy should be amended

Right. My point is that having a list in the firt place makes the
process very complicated, and will very often require the policy to be
updated. Which we all know is a process that takes, ahem, a lot of time.


> > > That certainly needs a better wording ...
> > > 
> > > For conferences:
> > > 
> > > Non-personal postings for conferences are limited to Community recognized
> > > conferences. The items on the following list can each warrant a separate
> > > posting on Planet:
> > > 
> > > Conference announcement
> > > Call for Papers open
> > > Call for Sponsors open
> > > Call for Papers closed
> > > Schedule published
> > > Registration open
> > > Conference starts
> > > Conference ends
> > > Summary
> > > Major conference changes (like date or location change)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Did I miss any major items in the list?
> > Speaker changed of a talk?
> > Speaker changed of an important keynote talk?
> > Topic changed of an important keynote talk?
> > Number of tracks changed (can be at least as important as schedule published).
> > Registration closed?
> > Call for sponsors closed?
> > 
> > Making a bulletpoint list like that of exactly what is allowed is
> > *always* going to end up something reasonable that's just outside the
> > list.
> 
> At which point will you find new things for the list? And additional
> question: at which point is posting about this against policy today?
> 
> It's not that this violates any policy, heck I pointed out the contrary.
> It's just that the conference posts this, not Magnus or Andreas.

You're the one who's making a list of what's allowed. So you then need
to make that list complete.

Again, I'm saying that making a policy based on such a list is
inherently going to be a massive PITA to deal with.


> > Which makes it very clear that there is absolutely no way that his
> > will work without doing pre-moderation on posts to planet.
> > 
> > Are you also volunteering to set up a team to do said pre-moderation
> > and make sure that all posts are moderated within reasonable time, as
> > well as deal with the complaints when they're not? :)
> 
> I don't understand why this needs pre-moderation?

Based on the experience of the kind of crap we get at other venues, such
as the postings to the main website, where we do allow such posts? Those
things *are* pre-moderated.


> Blogs are still pre-approved, and something which looks fishy
> (PostgreSQL 419 Conference in Nigeria) doesn't need to be approved
> in the first place. Content-wise nothing is changed with this policy change,

Based on that, sure, anything where people are not willing to sign off
on who is writing it sounds fishy to me, so thus no personal blogs :)


> and if there is no need for content moderation today, there is no need
> for moderation with a different account. Plus the 3 strike system is in
> place.

There is arguably some need for content moderation today. Because the
kind of post-moderation that's done today only removes things after it
has been delivered to tens of thousands of people. It does take it out
of the future google searches, yes, but that's all.


But sure, if we say "we allow non-personal posts from trusted entities
only", then we just have to define what we mean by "trusted entity".

And if you're just saying "oh community approved conferences", then you have
to explain why just those (and no, "i want to post for those" is not a
good reason -- if it was, I would've been doing so myself a long time
ago). And you're putting an even *heavier* burden on the ideas around
the community conference approval process, which is already hard anough
as it is.

And you also say for "tools". But which tools? What are the rules to
decide them, and who decides that they are in relation to them?


And apart from that, if all the community conferences start actually
posting all those things that you have on your list to planet, then
planet will primarily turn into an "announcement for conferences"
resource, which I'm pretty sure most of them don't want.

One thing that could perhaps be done around that is to create the
ability to have multiple feeds on planet. Then people could *choose* if
they want to include just blog posts, or also conferenec announcements,
or also non-personal blog posts etc. Being able to separate things out
like that would certainly make the moderation less important, because
readers themselves can choose to pre-filter.

//Magnus