Planet posting policy - Mailing list pgsql-www

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
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
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.
---

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.

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

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