Lately the Drupal Planet is starting to look more and more like Drupal Talk. A whole bunch of people have been added to the Planet the last couple of month and I don't feel it has done a lot of good to the quality of the feed. I wonder what the criteria is to get added to the Planet these days, and even what we expect the Planet to be?
I don't mind non-Drupal sites being on the Planet, I love Jacob Singh's and Leisa Reichelt's blogs for instance. But there's a whole lot of low-quality content these days. The Drupal Planet helps spread and define the Drupal brand, its feed gets read by thousands of people and since it's hosted on drupal.org it has a feel of an "official" word on what's going on in the Drupal community. I feel that we shouldn't be accepting just any request from people to go on the Planet and inform these people about Drupal Talk and how to get their posts there.
Comments
Really? I love it.
I've think that the Drupal Planet has been awesome lately. Disclaimer: I've added a number of new feeds recently!
Let's take a look at the current headlines:
To me, these are all 100% on topic. Some are written better than others, and some have a better sense of the audience that they're addressing than others, but they all contain original content about Drupal.
Drupal Talk, on the other hand, relies on aggregators and pulls in a lot of stuff that is either second hand or only orthogonally related to Drupal.
So, to answer your question directly, the difference between Drupal Planet and Drupal Talk is a matter of original source versus aggregation.
If you're looking for guidelines for what to add, here is what I would propose (because this is how I make the decision myself):
Now, if you want to filter the Planet because it is too much, I highly recommend Yahoo! Pipes as a way of getting a more focused feed. You can run the Planet into a pipe and set up any number of filters (or add other sources into it!)
PS - Jacob Singh and Leisa
PS - Jacob Singh and Leisa Reichelt are both kickass Drupal contributors. How did you conclude they're "non Drupal"? RobsHouse.net is not a "Drupal" site either, but that's what taxonomy is for.
Jacob's headlines are:
- How to - gzip compression between Drupal and nginx / apache
- Taking control of your block’s theme with blocktheme
- 250k nodes working to save our habitat
- AdminRole 6.x released (finally)
- How to handle urls for “mini sites” in panels 2
- Helpers_user: The user API that never was
Leisa's titles are:
- Drupal.org - come wireframe with me!
- Outsiders and Insiders - Understanding Drupal.org users
- DRAFT: Drupal.org Experience Strategy
- User research for Drupal.org redesign - what we’ve done, what we’re doing
- Opening the floodgates! How to participate in the Drupal.org redesign project
- Try Google Docs for survey or recruitment forms
- Contemplating Open Source UX
- Social literacy - does ‘karma gaming’ matter?
So I really don't understand what you mean by
Ah, is it that they don't use Drupal to write their posts? Mind you, I've never ever thought it was necessary to use Drupal to get published on the Planet. You can use MS FrontPage for all I care =)
Here's how Drupal Planet describes itself:
Sites that are not running Drupal
With non-Drupal I indeed mean sites that are not using the Drupal software, not that they're not about Drupal. It's because Jacob and Leisa kick ass that I took them as an example (and Jacob is a CivicActions collegue of mine btw).
I see your points and I agree with them. What ticked me was this post: Using less Drupal. I figured this blog was added recently because it hadn't been updated in a year and just this month there are 3 posts on Drupal, with the 3rd being about how the site is moving away from Drupal. My idea was about this really shouldn't be on the Planet. Not because it gives critique on Drupal, I welcome well-funded critique, but because we shouldn't spread FUD from just anyone. But it appears this blog has been on the Planet for a a long time, since 2006 even running Drupal 4.7.
JakeG is also a great Drupal contributor
He's contributed some nice stuff. And I know it pains his heart to have written that post. But it is also a valuable piece of information. It's him telling us what we would need to do to keep people like him involved. I don't see it as FUD. If Drupal no longer served my needs I'd also write about it.
PS you meant well-founded, not well-funded, right?
I think we're on the same page, though, regarding the Planet. I wouldn't stand for anyone sniping from the sidelines or spreading misinformation.
Re: Sites that are not running Drupal
I don't see this particular posting as spreading FUD. The author had honest frustrations that led him to change platforms -- a task that is hardly trivial. So whatever problems he encountered were frustrating enough that migrating to a new platform was worth it. That's a serious issue to think about.
When someone leaves Drupal for another platform, we need to look at why. For every one user who is vocal about it, there is at least one who is silent about it, usually more. We can never let ourselves fall into the view that they just "don't get it." Successful software depends on the developers and community being able to analyze and discuss criticism. "Our way is the right/only/best" way is a dangerous view to fall into.
For those of us who work professionally with Drupal, we have to understand these critiques and how to address them because our clients and potential clients may have read them and will certainly bring them up.
And when someone switches to Drupal from another platform, we also need to look at why. We can't just wave little red flags cheering "hooray." Platform migration isn't easy, and it requires justification. When someone switches to Drupal, it means we got something right that their previous platform didn't, and that it was worth switching for.
We also have to remain cognizant of the fact that Drupal isn't always the best tool for the job. Just because you have a nice hammer doesn't mean everything is a nail; sometimes you really need a screwdriver. Wordpress addresses a very specific niche, and for many people it may be the better solution for their needs.
The aspect of the Drupal community that I find most appealing is the lack of a fundamentalist world-view. The community has the ability to take constructive criticism and reflect on it. There isn't a "Drupal is mother, is father" attitude that sometimes takes hold of open source (or commercial) communities. If the community ever went in that direction, I'd pack my goodies and go somewhere else.
Are you serious about MS
Are you serious about MS Frontpage? ;-)
But you are right, it should not be a dogma to run a Drupal site to get featured on the Drupal planet.
--
My Drupal Articles
The Planet certainly gets
The Planet certainly gets used for too much self-promotion at times, and while that might be my only gripe about it I'd rather have to skip over or ignore the occasional ad than not have much to read.
Drupal planet is changing, as is the Drupal community
The Drupal planet is changing. I've been one of the main proponents of opening up Drupal planet to more voices in the community. I think the tone of Drupal planet is changing from "here's a snippet I've written", or "here's a proposed architecture" to here's what's interesting in the Drupal community.
That can definitely leave a feeling that the quality is being diluted. When others have suggested the quality has been reduced, they've pointed to a couple of very specific posts that were very low quality and a result of a post being added to the main feed from a site, and not a Drupal planet specific feed.
In a few cases, I've reached out to those who are blogging about non-drupal stuff on the planet and specifically asked them to create a Drupal planet feed and to ensure that future posts have sufficient content about Drupal.
The planet currently has under three hundred feeds and by no means is that an accurate representation of the interesting things being written about Drupal. I'd like to see the number of contributors increase dramatically, but at the same time have some well defined criteria which each post can be measured by for appropriateness.
Kieran
Drupal community adventure guide, Acquia Inc.
Drupal events, Drupal.org redesign
Changing yes, but for the better?
With all the new sites added this really enforces my feeling that the Planet is turning into a second Drupal Talk. Take for instance this one: http://www.dawhb.com/?p=367. For me Drupal Planet stands for filtered, quality articles on Drupal and this one clearly doesn't fall in that category.
Edit: In sheer contrast for instance stands Social CMS Buzz which is an amazing resource, with great information on Drigg for instance. So really, I feel there's not a lot of consistancy in the quality of the newly added sites, especially the ones that had their first Drupal post.
I get annoyed with off-topic
I get annoyed with off-topic posts on planet (and some of the self-promotion as well), at least in part because it's busier, so it makes me more likely to miss something good. I think this is something that could be dealt with partially by my.drupal.org though - for example taking all the tags from planet posts rather than just one, so there's some pre-filtering available for people who want to read particular kinds of articles. Having planet posts archived and indexed somewhere on *.d.o might help too.
Self promotion
What qualifies as self promotion?
-Announcing you taking new job, or leaving a job?
-A new Drupal product?
-That you are hiring?
-A new site you just launched?
All of it?
Drupal community adventure guide, Acquia Inc.
Drupal events, Drupal.org redesign
All of them are
All of them are self-promotion, yes. Some people manage to make such posts interesting, some don't.
I'd add
- Announcing that you're attending a conference that isn't Drupalcon
- Announcing you're attending Drupalcon without any other salient information
- Any post which is about something completely different and happens to mention Drupal once (those are usually more spam than self-promotion).
There's not that many, but it's groan-inducing when you see them.
Could this be solved with user preferences?
Slashdot has an option that allows you to "uncheck" various authors if you don't want to see stories that they've posted. I wonder if a similar option would be feasible for Planet; i.e., a preferences page that listed every blog in the feed with a checkbox that you could uncheck if you didn't want to see posts from that person or company.
The issue with that is that
The issue with that is that some people post perfectly good content some of the time, and pap at others. I'd like to see us having more intelligent tagging on there - so 'commercial' 'development' 'design' 'howtos' etc. then you could pick and choose which channels of planet you wanted. Having said that, I wouldn't mind an ignore function on drupal.org in general ;)
This is something I've been thinking about for a while..
Advertisements and promotional posts are growing in number, and I think we're heading for problems if some guidelines are not established.
A lot of promotional posts come from companies who also provide great value to the community. It's easy to overlook when a big Drupal sponsor uses Planet as a job posting board or a place to advertise new product launches, but harder when an individual posts a Drupal article that happens to contain an affiliate link. I've personally run into problems for posting a Drupal hosting review, but other companies have freely advertised the launch of Drupal hosting services.
The problem is: where do you draw the line on what's acceptable, and what isn't? And how do you get fair moderation for everyone? Without guidelines, we're all shooting in the dark.
Obviously, Planet can be a useful vehicle for promotion. Planet gives everyone access to a large, captive audience with a strong interest in Drupal. It drives visitors to your site free of charge, all you need to do is publish a story. There's a lot of value in that for companies and individuals looking to sell Drupal services. At the same time, too much advertising hurts the quality of the feed, and turns users off.
Drupal needs a healthy economy in order to grow, and Planet, intentionally or not, has become a key piece in that puzzle.
I think the time has come to establish a set of clear guidelines we can all follow. The goal being two-fold:
This is obviously easier said than done, and I'd like to hear what other people think.
A set of guidelines also
A set of guidelines also including instructions on how to get listed on the planet should be linked from the planet's start page. The original forum announcement (http://drupal.org/node/31026) could be used as a draft for this piece of Drupal.org documentation.
But even if all guidelines are met, there will be posts, that some people will consider off topic or uninteresting and others will love theme. For example, I am not interested in Job offers, but they are usually easy to recognize and so I just don't read them and it doesn't hurt me that they appear in the feed. If my job situations changes sometime in the future I might be happy about such posts.
Non developers are probably not interested in Drupal coding tutorials, but no one being sane would argue for removing them from the planet.
The point is there cannot be an aggregation feed with hundreds of authors and thousands of subscribers that enjoy all posts every time, which is not an argument against guidelines.
--
My Drupal Articles
Anyone who was around 4
Anyone who was around 4 years ago could tell you that "self-promotion" has been a part of Drupal-related blogging for quite some time. It's not new. I have skipped many posts as "not interesting to me," but I have yet to see any real spam that would discredit the entire OPML. I'm afraid that any censorship efforts in "quality" of feeds will lead to politics that would not benefit the community.
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Not just self-promotion
We're not just talking about self-promotion here, we're talking about general low-quality content. Here's an interesting issue on drupal.org: who is adding Yahoo Pipes feeds to Drupal planet? but sadly no actions were taken to resolve the problem at hand.
Drupal Planet far from spammy
As someone who reads several hundred feeds -- Drupal planets signal/noise ratio is still very high compared to a lot of feeds I read. I don't find it very hard to scan the titles of my feed reader and pick out interesting articles. Yes there is junk but as several others mentioned, censoring to improve quality would be a case of where the cure is worse than the sickness. Anything that's done I think should be on the level of suggested guidelines for posts and gentle reminders sent via email to offenders.
Kyle Mathews
Kyle Mathews
Sounds about right. My above
Sounds about right. My above post looked a bit more negative than I intended it to be. Planet is about the only feed I go out of my way to read, so the odd off-topic post doesn't bother me very much in the scheme of things.