Planet posting policy

[Dave Page-7]

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.

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

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

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[Magnus Hagander-2]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:59, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:

> 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

I don't like the use of "pure advertising". That makes it go overboard
in the other direction instead - it's too easy to argue that almost
*anything* isn't *pure* advertising...


> 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

I'm not sure what the "state of the art" part is actually supposed to
mean? As in, what does it actually add on top of the already bbeing
interesting to those working with or around postgres?

> 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.
> ---

Should we perhaps also add something about referring to things that
are IP protected, such as patented technologies, that we don't really
want people posting about?


> 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.

While I don't disagree with relaxing the policies a bit, I only recall
a single instance of this actually happening recently, and in that
case it would've also failed the new wording above. Do you have some
examples? (if you don't want to post those publically for obvious
reasons, feel free to just remind me personally or the closed
moderators list about those cases, so we are not missing that
information)

--
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[Greg Sabino Mullane]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160


> 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.

Can you point to specific examples of blog posts that have been
self-moderated as to not appear on Planet due to our policies?
I think that would help this dicussion if we could see some actual
problematic posts. I am open to changing the wording.

> 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 seeing much of a distinction here. The key phrase of the
existing one is "useful PostgreSQL content", which is a fairly
broad description. I'm not sure what "state of the art (as related to
PostgreSQL)" even means, honestly.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [hidden email]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 201201291021
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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[Dave Page-7]

Hi

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Magnus Hagander <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:59, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> 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
>
> I don't like the use of "pure advertising". That makes it go overboard
> in the other direction instead - it's too easy to argue that almost
> *anything* isn't *pure* advertising...

OK.

>> 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
>
> I'm not sure what the "state of the art" part is actually supposed to
> mean? As in, what does it actually add on top of the already bbeing
> interesting to those working with or around postgres?

I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
in technical detail.

>> 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.
>> ---
>
> Should we perhaps also add something about referring to things that
> are IP protected, such as patented technologies, that we don't really
> want people posting about?

Sure.

>> 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.
>
> While I don't disagree with relaxing the policies a bit, I only recall
> a single instance of this actually happening recently, and in that
> case it would've also failed the new wording above. Do you have some
> examples? (if you don't want to post those publically for obvious
> reasons, feel free to just remind me personally or the closed
> moderators list about those cases, so we are not missing that
> information)

The cases I'm thinking of probably include the one you're thinking of,
however I thought we blocked two posts from different authors on
essentially the same subject. Maybe I'm misremembering though, and we
let one of them pass.

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

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

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[Dave Page-7]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Greg Sabino Mullane <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
>
>> 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.
>
> Can you point to specific examples of blog posts that have been
> self-moderated as to not appear on Planet due to our policies?
> I think that would help this dicussion if we could see some actual
> problematic posts. I am open to changing the wording.

I have no idea of any posts that have been self-moderated, except for
one of my own which I posted only to the EnterpriseDB blog:
http://blogs.enterprisedb.com/2011/08/23/postgres-enterprise-manager-i-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together/

I would have liked to have been able to post that to my regular blog
so it appeared on Planet, though had I thought that possible I would
have gone into more technical detail about how the product is
architected, and made it less "marketing" sounding.


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

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

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[Josh Berkus]

Dave,

I think a list of what's prohibited would be simpler:

==================

The purpose of Planet PostgreSQL is to provide useful news, ideas,
technical information, and community discussion for members of the
PostgreSQL community.  It is not a medium for advertising commercial
products and services; the community has other channels for that.
Therefore, the following kinds of content are prohibited from Planet
PostgreSQL, and may cause your blog to be removed from syndication if
you post them:

* Posts whose primary purpose is to advertise a commercial product,
service, website, or event and lack substantial technical information or
news of community interest;

* Multiple and frequent posts which center around the same commercial
product, service, event, or website with significant advertising content.

Since the above evaluations are qualitative, here's some examples:

BAD: Post announcing the launch of your new PostGIS-based website,
without any real mention of PostGIS.

GOOD: Post announcing the launch of your new PostGIS-based website, with
a couple sentences about how it's based on PostGIS.

BAD: 5 posts in a row about the new PostGIS website, all of which lack
siginificant technical content.

GOOD: Post about your commercial Postgres fork, how it differs from
mainstream PostgreSQL, and why you'd want to use it.

GOOD: Post about the technical challenges you overcame when developing
your commercial Postgres fork.

BAD: Post announcing the availability of version 3.5.641 of your
commercial Postgres fork, with details copied directly from the press
release.

==============================


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PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
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[Dave Page-7]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Josh Berkus <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Dave,
>
> I think a list of what's prohibited would be simpler:
>
> ==================
>
> The purpose of Planet PostgreSQL is to provide useful news, ideas,
> technical information, and community discussion for members of the
> PostgreSQL community.  It is not a medium for advertising commercial
> products and services; the community has other channels for that.
> Therefore, the following kinds of content are prohibited from Planet
> PostgreSQL, and may cause your blog to be removed from syndication if
> you post them:
>
> * Posts whose primary purpose is to advertise a commercial product,
> service, website, or event and lack substantial technical information or
> news of community interest;
>
> * Multiple and frequent posts which center around the same commercial
> product, service, event, or website with significant advertising content.
>
> Since the above evaluations are qualitative, here's some examples:
>
> BAD: Post announcing the launch of your new PostGIS-based website,
> without any real mention of PostGIS.
>
> GOOD: Post announcing the launch of your new PostGIS-based website, with
> a couple sentences about how it's based on PostGIS.
>
> BAD: 5 posts in a row about the new PostGIS website, all of which lack
> siginificant technical content.
>
> GOOD: Post about your commercial Postgres fork, how it differs from
> mainstream PostgreSQL, and why you'd want to use it.
>
> GOOD: Post about the technical challenges you overcame when developing
> your commercial Postgres fork.
>
> BAD: Post announcing the availability of version 3.5.641 of your
> commercial Postgres fork, with details copied directly from the press
> release.

I like that.


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

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

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[Bruce Momjian]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 10:59:29AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:

> 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).

While I am not against relaxing the rules, it would be a shame if the
new rules were more vague than the old ones.  The old rules, while
strict, were very easy to mentally filter;  I am worried more vague
rules will lead to more uncertainty and perhaps arguments/hurt feelings.

--
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  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + It's impossible for everything to be true. +

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[Peter Geoghegan-2]

On 29 January 2012 18:42, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
> in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
> happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
> about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
> art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
> in technical detail.

Are you sure that that wouldn't be allowed under our current policy?
I'd have thought that was fine, provided that it was actually useful.

I'm unsure of my position relating to relaxing those rules. I wouldn't
like to arbitrarily prevent someone from talking about a topic of
actual interest or utility to the community on the sole basis that it
mentioned proprietary software or commercial services in an incidental
or matter-of-fact fashion. That wasn't how I understood the rules to
work though.

It might be helpful if you could cite a specific incident of the
current rules tripping someone up in a way that was clearly against
the community's interest.

Bruce has a good point - the rules should be easily understood.

--
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PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services

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[Dave Page-7]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Peter Geoghegan <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 29 January 2012 18:42, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
>> in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
>> happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
>> about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
>> art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
>> in technical detail.
>
> Are you sure that that wouldn't be allowed under our current policy?
> I'd have thought that was fine, provided that it was actually useful.

It might have been under the policy itself, however we've been
interpreting that based on the guidance notes which are pretty strict,
and essentially only allow posts of a purely technical nature.

> It might be helpful if you could cite a specific incident of the
> current rules tripping someone up in a way that was clearly against
> the community's interest.

I can't do that I'm afraid, as it may cause embarrassment for the
people/companies involved.

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

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

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[Dave Page-7]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 4:25 AM, Bruce Momjian <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 10:59:29AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:
>> 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).
>
> While I am not against relaxing the rules, it would be a shame if the
> new rules were more vague than the old ones.  The old rules, while
> strict, were very easy to mentally filter;  I am worried more vague
> rules will lead to more uncertainty and perhaps arguments/hurt feelings.

To some extent I think that's unavoidable. The current rules are
interpreted pretty strictly and state that unless there is "useful
PostgreSQL content" when product names have been removed, it will not
be allowed. The issue I have with that is that it precludes
*interesting* posts which may describe new products based on use of
PostgreSQL in innovative or unusual ways. That's happened a couple of
times in the past.

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

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The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

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[Peter Geoghegan-2]

On 30 January 2012 07:50, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Peter Geoghegan <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> It might be helpful if you could cite a specific incident of the
>> current rules tripping someone up in a way that was clearly against
>> the community's interest.
>
> I can't do that I'm afraid, as it may cause embarrassment for the
> people/companies involved.

Maybe you should contact them privately and ask them to share their grievances?

--
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PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services

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[Magnus Hagander-2]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 19:47, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Greg Sabino Mullane <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: RIPEMD160
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Can you point to specific examples of blog posts that have been
>> self-moderated as to not appear on Planet due to our policies?
>> I think that would help this dicussion if we could see some actual
>> problematic posts. I am open to changing the wording.
>
> I have no idea of any posts that have been self-moderated, except for
> one of my own which I posted only to the EnterpriseDB blog:
> http://blogs.enterprisedb.com/2011/08/23/postgres-enterprise-manager-i-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together/
>
> I would have liked to have been able to post that to my regular blog
> so it appeared on Planet, though had I thought that possible I would
> have gone into more technical detail about how the product is
> architected, and made it less "marketing" sounding.

I think that blog post itself is a very good example of content we
*don't* necessarily want on planet.

It's too bad you didn't write a version that had the technical detali
and was less marketing/pressrelease:y to compare with :-) Because
AIUI, you don't actually suggest changing the policies as far as to
allow that post as it is - it would've allowed the modified version
only?

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[Magnus Hagander-2]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 06:21, Peter Geoghegan <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 29 January 2012 18:42, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
>> in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
>> happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
>> about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
>> art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
>> in technical detail.
>
> Are you sure that that wouldn't be allowed under our current policy?
> I'd have thought that was fine, provided that it was actually useful.

I think it is, under the "it's a use-case of postgresql". I don't see
how it would fail to pass the current policies?

if they built it on postgres plus advanced server, or greenplum, it
would be off limits, because then it's not related to postgresql other
than in "second generation".

> I'm unsure of my position relating to relaxing those rules. I wouldn't
> like to arbitrarily prevent someone from talking about a topic of
> actual interest or utility to the community on the sole basis that it
> mentioned proprietary software or commercial services in an incidental
> or matter-of-fact fashion. That wasn't how I understood the rules to
> work though.

Me either. It might be that the rules are fine and the *guidelines*
are unclear on that though. But the rule of "if you strip mentioning
of the commercial product, is it still interesting to the community"
would seem to allow that pretty well in my understanding.


> It might be helpful if you could cite a specific incident of the
> current rules tripping someone up in a way that was clearly against
> the community's interest.

Yes. I realize, as you said later downthread, that you can't really do
it without casting said persons/companie in bad light. But perhaps you
can try to "anonymize" an example?


> Bruce has a good point - the rules should be easily understood.

Yes, this is important. Both to make it clear to people what is ok and
what isn't, and also to decrease the risk of long-running arguments
when something *is* moderated. (Which has, under these rules, happened
extremely seldom)

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[Simon Riggs]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Magnus Hagander <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I think that blog post itself is a very good example of content we
> *don't* necessarily want on planet.

Yeh. It all seems quite simple to me. We're here to contribute to a
specific open source project, so write a blog about what you have done
lately that furthers those goals.

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[Bruce Momjian]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 07:50:20AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Peter Geoghegan <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > On 29 January 2012 18:42, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >> I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
> >> in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
> >> happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
> >> about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
> >> art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
> >> in technical detail.
> >
> > Are you sure that that wouldn't be allowed under our current policy?
> > I'd have thought that was fine, provided that it was actually useful.
>
> It might have been under the policy itself, however we've been
> interpreting that based on the guidance notes which are pretty strict,
> and essentially only allow posts of a purely technical nature.

I think the real risk we have in relaxing the rules is that postings
will be made who's _intent_ is to highlight a commercial product.  Once
the indent is commercial promotion, the blog itself isn't very
interesting to others.

We have succussfully blocked such postings --- the big question is
whether we can allow postings based on commercial products without
having postings that are "intended" to be promotional.

I think Dave or Josh mention the pitfall tangentially --- if someone's
intent is promotional, they might blog about how to do X with some
commercial product, then, next week, show how to do Y with some
commercial product.  Imagine them thinking, "Oh, I haven't blogged about
my commercial product in a while, and the Postgres blog is very popular,
let me think of how to do that again."

I am not saying that will happen, but it might happen if we aren't as
clear as we are now in the guidelines.  And if our rules are not as
clear as they are now, we then have to guess what their intent was, and
pick apart the blog post to get facts to support our interpretation.

I think everyone kind of agrees our rules are too tight, but it is
unclear how to relax them _clearly_.

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[Cédric Villemain-3]

Le 30 janvier 2012 15:57, Bruce Momjian <[hidden email]> a écrit :

> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 07:50:20AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Peter Geoghegan <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> > On 29 January 2012 18:42, Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> >> I was trying to find a way to allow posts that aren't purely technical
>> >> in nature. For example, if a company started a new website that
>> >> happened to have 10TB of geo data stored in Postgres, I'd want to hear
>> >> about it as a good example of Postgres being used in "state of the
>> >> art" ways, even if it wasn't necessarily a post about how they did it
>> >> in technical detail.
>> >
>> > Are you sure that that wouldn't be allowed under our current policy?
>> > I'd have thought that was fine, provided that it was actually useful.
>>
>> It might have been under the policy itself, however we've been
>> interpreting that based on the guidance notes which are pretty strict,
>> and essentially only allow posts of a purely technical nature.
>
> I think the real risk we have in relaxing the rules is that postings
> will be made who's _intent_ is to highlight a commercial product.  Once
> the indent is commercial promotion, the blog itself isn't very
> interesting to others.
>
> We have succussfully blocked such postings --- the big question is
> whether we can allow postings based on commercial products without
> having postings that are "intended" to be promotional.
>
> I think Dave or Josh mention the pitfall tangentially --- if someone's
> intent is promotional, they might blog about how to do X with some
> commercial product, then, next week, show how to do Y with some
> commercial product.  Imagine them thinking, "Oh, I haven't blogged about
> my commercial product in a while, and the Postgres blog is very popular,
> let me think of how to do that again."
>
> I am not saying that will happen, but it might happen if we aren't as
> clear as we are now in the guidelines.  And if our rules are not as
> clear as they are now, we then have to guess what their intent was, and
> pick apart the blog post to get facts to support our interpretation.
>
> I think everyone kind of agrees our rules are too tight, but it is
> unclear how to relax them _clearly_.

I don't know exactly about rules but I am happy to read
planet.postgresql with the current contents (so the rules looks good
so far)
I won't if its to read about internals of close-source products or
derivate work from close-source product where removing the name of the
close-source thing is going to remove the interest of the article for
PostgreSQL and derivate open-source toools and projects.
Also I am not interested in content I won't be able to use because of
licence restriction. (not off-topic I believe)

Maybe the next time someone got a post refused he/she can be asked if
he agrees to be used to debate the rules change...

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[Josh Berkus]

> I think that blog post itself is a very good example of content we
> *don't* necessarily want on planet.

See, while for me it's exactly the kind of post I think *should* be
included.  Because I'm a working consultant, I'm interested in what the
various commercial forks can do for my customers, and as a PostgreSQL
hacker I'm interested in what the various commercial tools tell us about
our users.  As long as it's not press releases.

I don't think it's going to be possible to have one feed which pleases
everyone.  Maybe we should have two feeds?  /oss and /universe ?

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[Magnus Hagander-2]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 18:58, Josh Berkus <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> I think that blog post itself is a very good example of content we
>> *don't* necessarily want on planet.
>
> See, while for me it's exactly the kind of post I think *should* be
> included.  Because I'm a working consultant, I'm interested in what the
> various commercial forks can do for my customers, and as a PostgreSQL
> hacker I'm interested in what the various commercial tools tell us about
> our users.  As long as it's not press releases.

Did you read the example? It *was* basically a press release...


> I don't think it's going to be possible to have one feed which pleases
> everyone.  Maybe we should have two feeds?  /oss and /universe ?

Sure, we could probably find a way to do that, but is the demand
really high enough to make it worth it?

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[Josh Berkus]

Magnus,

> Did you read the example? It *was* basically a press release...

Not from my perspective.  Dave's post tells me in factual language
exactly what the features of PEM are (or are intended to be), sufficient
to let me know if I should investigate PEM for my customers and PUG or
not.

And if you compare it to the EDB press release on the same topic, you'll
note some dramatic content and style differences.  Based on the EDB
press release, I'd dismissed PEM as yet more EDB vaporware until I got
to pgOpen.

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