Thread: Thinking about
I would like to see us encourage people whose blogs are syndicated to planet PostgreSQL and to .org to write fewer, though more substantial blog posts. Unfortunately, ISTM that by not having a minimum length for blogposts, we effectively incentivise writing lots of shallow articles, with no analysis, and no original content. It's hard to write a blog post that stays on .org for more than a day or two now. This discourages people from writing really deep, subtantial blogposts, because they know that traffic to their blog will quickly fall off as soon as it slides off .org to make room for other blog posts, which in some cases would be more appropriate as tweets. Am I the only one who thinks so? What measures could we take to improve the situation? -- Peter Geoghegan http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
On 07/26/2011 06:16 AM, Peter Geoghegan wrote: > I would like to see us encourage people whose blogs are syndicated to > planet PostgreSQL and to .org to write fewer, though more substantial > blog posts. > > Unfortunately, ISTM that by not having a minimum length for blogposts, > we effectively incentivise writing lots of shallow articles, with no > analysis, and no original content. > > It's hard to write a blog post that stays on .org for more than a day > or two now. This discourages people from writing really deep, > subtantial blogposts, because they know that traffic to their blog > will quickly fall off as soon as it slides off .org to make room for > other blog posts, which in some cases would be more appropriate as > tweets. > > Am I the only one who thinks so? What measures could we take to > improve the situation? > We have actually had this argument before because some folks were using their blog to status update. IMO, the more restriction you place on people who are blogging, the less they are going to start caring about whether or not their blog shows up on planet. The information up there now is relative, and appropriate. The reality is we have a lot of community members and a lot of them blog. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake -- Command Prompt, Inc. - http://www.commandprompt.com/ PostgreSQL Support, Training, Professional Services and Development The PostgreSQL Conference - http://www.postgresqlconference.org/ @cmdpromptinc - @postgresconf - 509-416-6579
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 > I would like to see us encourage people whose blogs are syndicated to > planet PostgreSQL and to .org to write fewer, though more substantial > blog posts. ... > What measures could we take to improve the situation? I think you've just done as much as you can, with this post. :) One "solution" would be to implement a voting system like MySQL has, but that has a lot of drawbacks. > It's hard to write a blog post that stays on .org for more than a day > or two now. This discourages people from writing really deep, > subtantial blogposts, because they know that traffic to their blog > will quickly fall off as soon as it slides off .org to make room for > other blog posts, which in some cases would be more appropriate as > tweets. > > Am I the only one who thinks so? I don't know, but I doubt the situation is as bad as you fear. I suspect a lot of people read via RSS feeds, or check often enough to compensate for the relatively[1] high churn. High quality posts tend to be linked to, and thus show up on google search results, which is probably way more important than how long they stay on .org. Having said all that, I'm against blog posts that would be more appropriate as tweets, but a scan of recent posts on planet.postgresql.org do not show any that are like that. [1] Pet peeve: slashdot only keeps 15 items in their RSS feed now, which is insane given they have over 3x that per day. - -- Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com End Point Corporation http://www.endpoint.com/ PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 201107261633 http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iEYEAREDAAYFAk4vJeMACgkQvJuQZxSWSsi2EwCfaUMCLtbl8Yv77cI/1V/lkWhd 7sMAoMLBg2NPu9i89+sZc4U2lGr4GM2d =bYEa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On tis, 2011-07-26 at 14:16 +0100, Peter Geoghegan wrote: > I would like to see us encourage people whose blogs are syndicated to > planet PostgreSQL and to .org to write fewer, though more substantial > blog posts. > > Unfortunately, ISTM that by not having a minimum length for blogposts, > we effectively incentivise writing lots of shallow articles, with no > analysis, and no original content. Well, these are blogs, not peer-edited journals. I like the occasional short and shallow article to read on the bus. > It's hard to write a blog post that stays on .org for more than a day > or two now. This discourages people from writing really deep, > subtantial blogposts, because they know that traffic to their blog > will quickly fall off as soon as it slides off .org to make room for > other blog posts, which in some cases would be more appropriate as > tweets. I doubt many of the existing bloggers care about the home page.
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote: >> It's hard to write a blog post that stays on .org for more than a day >> or two now. This discourages people from writing really deep, >> subtantial blogposts, because they know that traffic to their blog >> will quickly fall off as soon as it slides off .org to make room for >> other blog posts, which in some cases would be more appropriate as >> tweets. > > I doubt many of the existing bloggers care about the home page. We actually want that section of the homepage to change quickly - it shows there's activity around the project. -- Dave Page Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com Twitter: @pgsnake EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
On 27 July 2011 11:51, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote: >> I doubt many of the existing bloggers care about the home page. > > We actually want that section of the homepage to change quickly - it > shows there's activity around the project. I suppose that what I'm asking for here is editorial standards higher than "not spam". I think that the quality of blog posts is generally high, and I'm not really taking issue with volume per blogger here. In fact, it's worth pointing out that Depesz, the person with the highest number of posts on planet at the moment, produces great content that people are actually interested in, and that isn't at all shallow. I wouldn't ask Depesz to change anything about his blog. I now realise that doing anything about this is probably unworkable, and that it probably wasn't worth bringing up. -- Peter Geoghegan http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
Peter Geoghegan wrote: > On 27 July 2011 11:51, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote: > >> I doubt many of the existing bloggers care about the home page. > > > > We actually want that section of the homepage to change quickly - it > > shows there's activity around the project. > > I suppose that what I'm asking for here is editorial standards higher > than "not spam". I think that the quality of blog posts is generally > high, and I'm not really taking issue with volume per blogger here. In > fact, it's worth pointing out that Depesz, the person with the highest > number of posts on planet at the moment, produces great content that > people are actually interested in, and that isn't at all shallow. I > wouldn't ask Depesz to change anything about his blog. > > I now realise that doing anything about this is probably unworkable, > and that it probably wasn't worth bringing up. I am problably the most frequent short poster, as shown in the Planet PG statistics. I like to post to tell people about what is going on with the project. I don't think any of it is tweet length (140 characters), but they are short. In fact, I try to make the blog posts as short as possible, and link to further details, because people have a limited amount of time. (My emails are short too.) I don't think I could produce significant-length blog posts with any regularity. -- Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + It's impossible for everything to be true. +