376873 - Planet could do with an affiliation disclaimer

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Websites :: planet.mozilla.org, defect)

Description

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Apparently some people imagine that some of the posts on planet could reflect on the Mozilla Foundation and/or Corporation in a negative and/or unintended way. This seems reasonable to me, and I therefor propose that there should be a small disclaimer on the planet.mozilla.org main page stating that the blog posts are the responsibility of the owners of the linked blogs, and not the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation themselves. The exact text could be subject of debate, I guess, I don't have a very strong opinion on it, as long as it clarifies that the contents aren't an expression of official guidelines/opinions etc.

Comment 1

[Robert Accettura [:raccettura]]

There may be more than a disclaimer needed.  Not sure how all this non-profit stuff works, but since planet is hosted at planet.mozilla.org... what if someone were to post something political in support/against a candidate.  Could this in any way/shape/form impact non-profit status?

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

So a bunch of people who know lots more about this stuff than I do have now been CC-ed - does anyone want to take a stab at answering the questions Robert asked in comment #1, and/or proposing a concrete way this bug should move forward?

For reference, planet ubuntu has the following all the way at the bottom:

Blog entries aggregated on this page are owned by, and represent the opinion of the author.
[Copyright stuff about Ubuntu and other trademarks]
<link: Feedback> — <link: Legal>


The latter linking to a general legal disclaimer of responsibility etc: http://www.ubuntu.com/legal

Do people think that kind of thing will be enough for planet.m.o as well?

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Any progress on this bug? Asa?

Comment 4

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I think we should just replicate what planet ubuntu has. I'll talk with the Mozilla legal team and see what they think. We certainly don't hurt ourselves going with what Ubuntu does while we wait for more input though.

Comment 5

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

How about just a note at the top? Seems weird to put something at the bottom, after a person (theoretically) has read the entire page...

"Note: Collected below are the most recent blog posts from all over the Mozilla community. The content here is unfiltered and uncensored, and represents the views of individual community members."

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Ubuntu-like legalese disclaimer w/ registered trademarks

Comment 7

[Deb Richardson [:dria] (plz NEEDINFO)]

Asa: did you talk to legal about this?  What was their take on it?

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Patch for friendly disclaimer at top

So, these are the two options that were discussed, as far as I can tell. Either works for me, although I somewhat prefer the friendlier note at the top over the trademark stuff at the bottom. I guess it'd be up to legal to tell us if we need the latter whether we like it or not... Setting review? on Asa as that seems to be the person to bug about PMO...

Comment 9

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Talked to legal and they said we don't _need_ any legal text saying this but that it would be nice to have something describing what Planet is.  So let's go with Gijs' patch, the text is fine with me (if it's OK with others) but legal doesn't care about the particulars of phrasing or word choice here.

The more interesting conversation we had was about licensing of content and privacy policy. I'll file a follow-up but on that issue.

Comment 10

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 410305 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch for friendly disclaimer at top

Deb, does this text work for you?

Comment 11

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

filed bug 526591 for licensing issue

Comment 12

[Deb Richardson [:dria] (plz NEEDINFO)]

r=dria It's simple and to the point which is awesome.  Thanks Gijs.

Comment 13

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

What's the <h2> for? Might be worth styling the div with some light grey and italics, but no reason not to push it live for that.

Comment 14

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Patch to line up the extra div

I put in the h2 to make it consistent with the other sections in the sidebar. I tried grey - the background is white, so at least for me, that made it hard to read - plus, all of the other content in the sidebar is "straight" and not in italics. If people disagree, feel free.

The reason I'm adding another patch after all is that the previous one didn't have any padding in it, and so the div was shifted 15px out of line with all the other ones. Fixing that.

If this gets r+, I actually don't think I have commit access to SVN, so someone else will need to push it, I'm afraid. :-)

Comment 15

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Oh, silly me. I didn't notice your code was in the sidebar for some reason. Still wish we could get away without an h2, but makes much more sense now in my mind. :)

Comment 16

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to comment #15)
> Oh, silly me. I didn't notice your code was in the sidebar for some reason.
> Still wish we could get away without an h2, but makes much more sense now in my
> mind. :)

Fair enough!

(In reply to comment #14)
> If this gets r+, I actually don't think I have commit access to SVN, so someone
> else will need to push it, I'm afraid. :-)

I just read up on m.governance about the dormant accounts stuff, and checked gerv's list of all vcs accounts - apparently IT certainly thinks I have an SVN account, so I guess I'll try that if Asa is OK with this patch. :-)

Comment 17

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #16)
> I just read up on m.governance about the dormant accounts stuff, and checked
> gerv's list of all vcs accounts - apparently IT certainly thinks I have an SVN
> account, so I guess I'll try that if Asa is OK with this patch. :-)

Unlike CVS and Hg, SVN access is done by path, so you wouldn't have access. I'll be happy to commit this for you, however.

Comment 18

[Robert Accettura [:raccettura]]

Same here, when you're ready just say.

Comment 19

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to comment #18)
> Same here, when you're ready just say.

Yeah, just waiting on an r+ for that style addition. Should I just be carrying that over? If so, the last (non-obsolete) patch can be checked in, as far as I'm concerned.

Comment 20

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Comment on attachment 410458 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to line up the extra div

r=reed

I'll check this in for you with some minor changes (like make "Planet Mozilla" be a variable that comes from the config file, just like the existing title).

Comment 21

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to comment #20)
> (From update of attachment 410458 [details] [diff] [review])
> r=reed
> 
> I'll check this in for you with some minor changes (like make "Planet Mozilla"
> be a variable that comes from the config file, just like the existing title).

OK, has that happened yet? I don't know if PMO needs a push like AMO does - I just don't see anything on the live site yet. :-)

Comment 22

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

r56996

Comment 23

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #22)
> r56996

ugh, I forgot to include proper attribution to you, Gijs. My apologies.