Closed Bug 371198 Opened 17 years ago Closed 17 years ago

Planet not grabbing a post of mine

Categories

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

defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: preed, Unassigned)

Details

Attachments

(1 file)

I recently did a blog post (that, admittedly, had umlauts in the title), and planet.m.o never picked it up.

Another planet, http://planet.tacobeam.com did.

The post in question is:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/preed/2007/02/eine_identitat_ein_netz_eine_f.html

I had justdave take a look at the server, and he said it was crashing on parsing Ben Goodger's blog or something?

So maybe the question is "Do we need a planet.m.o upgrade?"

Also, it's unclear if this is causing other posts to be lost, hence the "major" severity; shaver noted that lots of people use planet.m.o to follow devnews, so that's semi important.
Might also be related to.. http://viewvc.svn.mozilla.org/vc/projects/planet/trunk/planet_templates/config.ini?view=log#rev2150
"Add filter to J. Paul Reed." which was done on 2/14.
Indeed.

Any idea why that was changed?
Attachment #255981 - Flags: review?
Attachment #255981 - Flags: review? → review?(tor)
OS: Linux → All
Hardware: PC → All
(In reply to comment #2)
> Any idea why that was changed?

The filter was added because a large number of posts to your blog were not mozilla related (such as the one that caused you to file this bug), and thus were taking away from the devnews focus of planet.mozilla.org.  If you have a feed containing items which you think should be on p.m.o, I'd be happy to switch to that instead of using a filter.
(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Any idea why that was changed?
> 
> The filter was added because a large number of posts to your blog were not
> mozilla related (such as the one that caused you to file this bug), and thus
> were taking away from the devnews focus of planet.mozilla.org.

Was preed asked about this before he was filtered out?  It sounds from the bug report like he wasn't, which seems pretty surprising.

(And don't a lot of people have non-Mozilla posts to their blogs that end up on Planet?  I think that socializing effect is a virtue, myself, and it's one of the things that makes other Planets interesting to follow, but I'd be happy to be pointed to discussion about how p.m.o needs to have a tighter focus for some project-health reason.)
(In reply to comment #5)
> Was preed asked about this before he was filtered out?  It sounds from the bug
> report like he wasn't, which seems pretty surprising.

No, he wasn't.  I try to avoid burdening people with requests, since many of them create blogs to write, not to start messing with the configuration of their blogging software.

> (And don't a lot of people have non-Mozilla posts to their blogs that end up on
> Planet?

Very few of non-mozilla posts get through.  The ones that do are from people who don't have a category feed, but post off-topic infrequently enough that it hasn't been necessary to take action.

>  I think that socializing effect is a virtue, myself, and it's one of
> the things that makes other Planets interesting to follow, but I'd be happy to
> be pointed to discussion about how p.m.o needs to have a tighter focus for some
> project-health reason.)

On the other hand, personally I feel that off-topic items make other planets less interesting.  There hasn't been a discussion about p.m.o focus; it's just the way I've run it since setting it up.  Feedback from my office (admittedly a small sample) tends to agree with this direction. 
If there's a policy then there should be a policy.  I'm not aware of any blogging software that makes it harder than checking a box to dictate what category to post something under.

The number of off-topic posts getting through shouldn't be based on how often it happens, that's not fair.
hrm, i've been removed. nobody told me. what's going on? something about little mozilla content? Who's the judge of that?
(In reply to comment #6)

> On the other hand, personally I feel that off-topic items make other planets
> less interesting.  There hasn't been a discussion about p.m.o focus; it's just
> the way I've run it since setting it up.  Feedback from my office (admittedly a
> small sample) tends to agree with this direction. 

There are a couple of issues here:

First, the question of what content is appropriate for planet.m.o. We all probably have a lot to say about that, but for now, let's not go there. That issue is not as disconcerting to me as the second issue, which is...

The lack of notification about planet.m.o changes, and the seemingly unilateral editorial decisions being made, without any solicitation or input from anyone.

In addition to the filter being added to my blog without any heads up (which basically amounts to removing my blog from planet.m.o, since I wouldn't [and didn't!] know which terms or tags would allow a post through and which wouldn't), other blogs have had filters added to them (roc's, at version 991 and 2014), and other people's blogs have been *removed entirely* (Pink's at 1415, Scott Kveton at 1112).

Did you notify ANY of these people before making these changes, especially the egregious removals?

I'm happy to have the "appropriate content for planet.m.o" conversation, but I think it's a conversation that should be had among the community, in a forum that the community reads. Not with the people in your office.

Until that conversation occurs, I'd ask that you approve the above patch.

I'm happy to have the filters re-added (and being notified would be great) after the community decides what editorial content is appropriate for planet.m.o.
I'd also note that Josh Aas is missing from Planet (I use Camino's equivalent to get his posts). While some of his posts have been off-topic, a lot of them are on-topic and about Mozilla on Mac, something that doesn't get covered much on Planet Mozilla. He's been gone for a while, but it'd be great to see him back what with all the Mac changes taking place as of late (the more exposure, the better).
(In reply to comment #9)
> The lack of notification about planet.m.o changes, and the seemingly unilateral
> editorial decisions being made, without any solicitation or input from anyone.

No, as planet is simply a customer of the various feeds, I didn't feel it was necessary to inform them of editorial decisions of p.m.o as I wanted maintenance to be lightweight process.  I can start a notification policy (example below) if that is felt appropriate.

> I'm happy to have the "appropriate content for planet.m.o" conversation, but I
> think it's a conversation that should be had among the community, in a forum
> that the community reads. Not with the people in your office.
> 
> Until that conversation occurs, I'd ask that you approve the above patch.

I've removed the filter for now.  Here's a test run of the notification policy:

Hello from the maintainer of planet.mozilla.org.  I've noticed that
your blog has frequent non-mozilla development related posts.  While
of course you should feel free to write about anything you want to, I
try to keep the posts aggregated on p.m.o related to mozilla
development news.

There are a couple ways we can do that with your blog.  If your
blogging software has the capability of adding categories to posts and
outputting a category feed, I'd be happy to use that feed instead of
your main blog feed.  Otherwise I can add a keyword filter on planet
to pick particular posts for aggregation.  The default keywords I use
are (mozilla, firefox, gecko, and thunderbird).

Please let me know what option you'd like to go with, and any extra
keywords you feel would be appropriate for your feed.  If you're
uncomfortable with either method of filtering your feed, I'll sadly
have to drop you from planet.

If I don't hear back from you within a week, I'll take the filter
option with the default keywords.

(In reply to comment #11)

> I've removed the filter for now.  Here's a test run of the notification policy:

It's somewhat difficult for me to parse where your notification example ends (if it does end), and where you're referring directly to me/my situation (since "If you're uncomfortable with either method of filtering your feed, I'll sadly
have to drop you from planet." seems to conflict with "If I don't hear back from you within a week, I'll take the filter option with the default keywords.")

In any event, there seems to be a disconnect between what some (many?) Mozilla community members feel is appropriate content for planet.m.o and what you feel is appropriate content for planet.m.o.

It might be prudent to solicit some input on the newsgroups regarding your editorial standard, as opposed to continuing to enforce it without any input from the Mozilla community.

Could you please point us to this discussion before (again) filtering (or removing) my, or anyone else's blogs from planet.m.o?
Hi TOR.  While you no doubt have been the owner of Planet, having set it up and maintained it these years, it is definitely a Mozilla community resource. I think that it has become a valuable enough resource that we should opt for a somewhat less light-weight process.

I think these changes would be good for Planet and good for our community. 

1. Several editors, preferably a set of peers and an owner. changes should be vetted by more than one person. (aka, a single level of peer review.)

2. Notification to blog owners before changes are made with an opportunity for protest/discussion. 

3. Notification to the Planet feed when changes are made so that planet consumers can adjust (users could add the individual feed to replace one filtered or removed from Planet.)

4. Develop a policy for inclusion at Planet.

On 1., I'd like to be added to the list of editors. On 4, I'd like to propose this as a starting point for feeds being included at Planet:  Planet will include blogs from active Mozilla community members as determined by the owner and peers at Planet. Mozilla contributors aggregated at Planet are encouraged to offer a Mozilla-specific feed (or, if Planet supports it, a Mozilla tag) but are not required to do so. Feeds which are determined to be predominantly (>50%) non-Mozilla may be filtered using a liberal set of keywords (TBD).
Personally, I *like* seeing offtopic posts, because I like to read about what people are up to in general, not just their Mozilla-specific stuff.  There's a number of people carried on planet that I subscribe to individually for this reason so I can still get their non-mozilla content.  I know there's a fair number of people who only care about the Mozilla content though.  Something I suggested briefly in the past (probably too briefly to get any real traction on it) was to have two copies of planet running, one which is specifically Mozilla content, and one which is full unfiltered copies of each of the feeds the main planet carries.  Then people could pick which one they wanted to watch.  planet.mozilla.org/unfiltered/ or something.
Dave, I think your suggestion is perfect. Until we get there, maybe unfiltered is the way to go.

Now that people have more sophisticated clients than they did a few years ago, maybe filtering at Planet isn't even necessary. Can Planet pass on tags? If so, we could just let people subscribe and filter on tags to get Moz-only content if that's what they were after.
Dave: right on!  I don't use the opml, or planet rss for that reason... downside being I have to go through every so often and manually add people to my feed reader every so often (pain in the ___).  But I like the off topic stuff too.  Go figure.

I agree planet needs to grow up as Asa suggests, though I'd hate to see "editors" per say.  To me that sounds to much like "censorship".  Owner/peers as "admins" sounds better.  I'll volunteer to help out, I'm a rather avid reader myself, and as Dave does I read both mozilla and non-mozilla posts by most participants.  Yea, just wordage, but it means a lot.  Blogs have been critical to various debates among the community.  I think it's important they are considered to be completely uncensored/free/open/unofficial (except where otherwise noted).  I'd love to see a policy that keeps the spirit of blogging @ p.m.o intact.  I think it can be done.

Also a perhaps a blogs.m.c blog for planet itself, listing additions/removals.  For those like me who want to keep track of that.  Simple 
"Welcoming John Doe to planet.m.o... go spam him" 
would be ample.  Planet related discussion as needed (such as this bug).

Other than that, I'm 110% behind Asa and Dave on this.  I'll volunteer to help as necessary.  I'm already reading all blogs on Planet, and have been since the beginning (and before that on Henrik Gemal's site), so no extra effort really needed.
> ([Mm]ozilla[^z]|[Ff]irefox|[Gg]ecko|[Tt]underbird)

what, no bugzilla, sunbird, camino, minimo, tamarin, ... ?


i think the default feed should be based on categories only, with an additional unfiltered feed which contains all blog posts (as per dave's suggestion).

if someone is unwilling/unable to set up categories on their blog, they should be visible in the unfiltered feed only.

I'll, uh, second? third? N-thify Asa and Dave's comments -- planet has become the social face of the mozilla community, and it should be managed just like any other mozilla project component with the process Asa described.

I also like the other two suggestions that were made... a filtered/unfiltered version would be good (though I would suggest that the unfiltered be the default, with a tagline at the top saying "want to read just the mozilla-related posts? visit ... ").  I'd also like to see an intro blog whenever someone is added to planet explaining who the person is and what they work on.

I'll add one more suggestion to the mix, though it and the intro-blog are less important than the others... on planet gnome, they have little face photos of all the bloggers next to their posts (opt-in, of course).  I think this would be a great way to help people put a face to a name in the community.
I like the policy of Planet Gnome. They include everyone that contributes to Gnome (on request) - even if the posts are not Gnome-related. I also agree that the posts that are not Mozilla-related are especially interesting as you see what the people involved do outside of Mozilla.

If the community should decide to have a policy, which allows filtering, this should be clearly and prominently stated somewhere on Planet. I was shocked to see, that some blogs where filtered. I wanted to read all posts of some of these blogs and I thought following Planet was enough. Now I notice that I might have missed some posts. This is like using Google in China and you don't know if there was content, that has been filtered. Very bad idea.

As a reader of Planet, I request that you remove all filters asap, until a policy is made. If you decide to keep the filters - even without policy - please at least add a note in a prominent place asap, so that no reader is missing something they would have liked to see on accident. Thank you.
If the community wants to switch to an editorial board, I'm happy to hand p.m.o over to them.  The technical side is easy for anyone to pick up; all the files are checked into svn, planet pulls the latest files each time it cycles, and the configuration files are quite easy to deal with.
Assignee: tor → nobody
A co-worker pointed out that I might not have been clear enough in my last comment, so here's another try:

I am handing maintainership of p.m.o to the mozilla community with immediate effect.  The necessary files are at svn.mozilla.org/projects/planet.  I've modified the planet config.ini to reflect the change (owner email pointed to nobody@mozilla.org for the moment), and modified index.html.tmpl to have a bugzilla link (component=planet.mozilla.org) instead of my email address.
+1 to asa/dave/roc/vlad's comments.  I'm happy to help out if there's something I can do -- let me know.

Since, as far as I know, there isn't another place to discuss this yet, I figured I'd mention that I'm one of the people that only reads planet for the Mozilla-related content. If it becomes as lax/unfiltered as it sounds like it will, I'd definitely like to see another planet set up for Mozilla-only posts.
can i get added back on planet now that we've changed our policy to something more sensical?
QA Contact: planet-mozilla-org
(In reply to comment #24)
> can i get added back on planet now that we've changed our policy to something
> more sensical?

I'll talk to Asa about doing that.

I'm going to resolve this fixed, since the original issue has been addressed, and I don't want the bug to mutate into tracking too many different issues.

Ping me on IRC if you don't see traction on that.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Verifide.

TOR, thanks for your years of service here. 

And I'll spin up a thread in the newsgroup. We've got a short to do list from this bug and a few more immediate items to get Planet into better shape.

Pink, we're on it.  Now how about retracting your accusation that this had something to do with "people at a corporation" and publishing an update that puts the blame where it rightfully belongs -- on a single contributor that had a different view from you (and others, including myself) of what Planet was supposed to be. This clearly had nothing to do with the Mozilla Corporation (TOR isn't employed by Mozilla) and your ambiguous "people at a corporation" is clearly going to mislead people into thinking this was some kind of MoCo censorship -- which it most certainly wasn't. 
 
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
(In reply to comment #26)

> Pink, we're on it.

Fix already checked in:

http://viewvc.svn.mozilla.org/vc?view=rev&revision=2329
Comment on attachment 255981 [details] [diff] [review]
Remove filter line

Clearing old request - this has been checked in.
Attachment #255981 - Flags: review?(tor)
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