Re: Planet posting policy

On 01/29/2012 10:25 AM, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> 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.

Missed this party first time around, chiming in late. We have a whole
category full of them at http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/en/greenplum/

These examples are further over the line here than the one Dave
suggested from his own blog. They're a useful data point though just
for that reason. Any rewritten policy that makes these suddenly Planet
material has likely gone too far. While surely there's somebody who
thinks a Planet PostgreSQL that also mixes in regular Greenplum features
is a great idea, I'd put my bet on that being a poor choice.

The line is closer for EDB and PEM. I think it's possible to write a
PEM blog post that fits the current rules. If I were tasked with doing
that, I'd start with some informative comments about things that are
hard to monitor in regular PostgreSQL, and what sorts of problems the
general management headaches related to it cause. Then an ending that
introduces PEM as an example of how one company addressed those problems
in a commercial product would be fine. I'd walk away knowing something
useful about common deployment problems, and the fact that a commercial
product was suggested as one way to solve them would be helpful.

I was the original author of the stickiest of the paragraphs here, this one:

"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."

That came out of seeing two similar violations appear in a short period,
and trying to write something that would be helpful guidance to exclude
both of them. I hoped that text might improve one day to sound a bit
more tolerant. I still don't have a good counter-example to chew on yet
though, something that would be blocked by this suggestion but is likely
to be popular anyway. It's a tricky line to draw.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com