([Mm]ozilla[^z]|[Ff]irefox|[Gg]ecko|[Tt]underbird)
I made a post last week, ostensibly about my experiences with Google Wifi. It was actually about much more.
It had an umlaut in the title, so I wasn't entirely surprised when it didn't show up on Planet.m.o, thinking maybe foreign languages caused inter-Planetary indigestion.
After some debugging, we found that Planet's parser was indeed crashing, but not on my blog.
I filed a bug to track the issue and within minutes—go go Gadget Mozilla Community—an... interesting configuration change was pointed out.
This change, which turned out to be the reason my post didn't make its way onto Planet, raises a couple of important issues which, from what I can tell, haven't really been raised or addressed heretofore:
The first is how editorial changes are made on planet.m.o, and how those changes get communicated, not only to those publishing to the feed, but to those reading it.
In my case, I was not notified that Planet's seemingly de facto (and sole) editor, Tim Rowley, had added the filter.1 I'm not entirely sure how planet filtering works,2 so adding filters to my blog without telling me effectively removed my blog from Planet's feed, because there's no way I would know which "magical keywords" I needed to use to get my content onto Planet now.
In looking at the (admittedly short) planet.m.o config history, it looks like I'm not the only one who's been silently censored: numerous people have been completely removed from Planet, without being given any notification or even a detailed explanation.3
In the bug, others have noticed community members' blogs missing from the Planet feed, which begs the question: just how many blogs were removed because a single person decided the content contained in those blogs wasn't what he (or his office4) was interested in reading?
It leaves me wondering "how much content, Mozilla-related, or otherwise am I missing from members of our community?"
The second obvious issue this raises is "What content is appropriate for Planet.m.o," and, slightly related, "How do we enforce that content policy?"
Obviously, this is a fairly gray line, with lots of opinions on the subject.
For myself, I write about a myriad of subjects, which tend to fall into "very Mozilla-related," "technology/web-industry related," and "not-at-all Mozilla-related."
Personally, I enjoy reading content on Planet that isn't necessarily (or maybe not directly) Mozilla-related; I see Planet as a community resource that illustrates the Community—what its working on, what its interested in and worried about, its trials and successes, how it relieves stress, what big changes are happening in people's lives that may affect the community—not merely the browser-and-related-projects and the code-that-goes-in-one-end and the bits-that-come-out-the-other.
Surely we could reduce Planet.m.o to a listing of fixed bugs and posts about what features we're working on and when releases are available. But doing so would remove the human face of our work, sucking the humanity out of the Mozilla Project. A feed that lacks these elements would serve to imply that we're all just a bunch of code-robots, hacking 24 hours a day, who don't [need to] have families or hobbies, who don't [need to] require sleep, and who don't need to be treated like we have lives outside of our work on Mozilla.
Not only would that be a tragic and depressing face to put on our project, it would be an insulting one.
I understand that not everyone may agree with me, though. For my own part, I have often written about topics not particularly Mozilla-related. I've continued to write about these because I've received numerous comments on IRC and in person saying they really liked a particular post. Sometimes it's been about why Digg and Slashdot users screw us. Sometimes it's been about flying.6
To be clear, I'm not saying that a more open policy of content on a space like planet.m.o does not require some consideration and respect for the forum their content is being featured in. I take special care to my non-Mozilla related posts in the "extended post" section, making it easy to skip over if the first paragraph doesn't grab your attention.7
In some cases, I try to use the same title, so it's really easy to skip in the feed reader. This is not about forcing people to read content they don't want to read. And you can be sure that if I'd gotten a couple of "Geez, man... stop with the stupid open letters"- or "I really hate your Gimp Art (tm)"-comments, I would've found another outlet for that particular content. But that hasn't been the case.
In fact, it's been quite the contrary.
Immaterial of the feedback from readers in the Community, I find myself experiencing a paralysis over writing anything now. It's been communicated—without being given the respect of being emailed or otherwise talked to— that I'm "allowed" to write about Mozilla, Firefox, Gecko, and Tunderbird. I find myself thinking "Well, I don't really have anything to say about those four specific topics. So I guess I won't bother writing anything," mostly for fear that this stuff really is boring and no one wants to read it.
That's a [hopefully?] unintended chilling effect of someone striving for "a lightweight process," but it nonetheless exists, and it's not very pleasant.
I'm not exactly sure how we're going to solve the problem; there are lots of possible solutions8, but I am sure of one thing: the silent filtering and dropping of content needs to stop.
The unilateral implementation of editorial policy that has not been discussed and is not posted anywhere needs to stop.
And the conversation about what's appropriate for our community needs to be had, not avoided.
We're the Mozilla Project; we have a history of doing better, and we can do better.
__________________________
1 But, being among only three people being filtered, I guess I'm in good company.
2 Does it filter subject titles? Tags? Posts? Blog comments? What? I actually spent some time Googling for this, and never did find a clear explanation.
3 In Pink's case, it is especially ironic that every single post he's made since he was removed for "very little Mozilla content" has been about Camino and/or Mozilla.
4 Pinkerton refers to a scary situation "when voices in the community can be turned off like a faucet at the whim of people at a corporation." I think this is somewhat confusing, because when we talk about "a" or "the Corporation," we're typically referring to the Mozilla Corporation. Tim Rowey works for IBM, not MoCo.5
5 And I think it needs to be said: I have no doubt in my mind that there would be rioting in the virtual-streets if someone at MoCo were asserting this level of editorial control-without-input over a resource like Planet.
6 But if you read between the lines, it's actually not, which is why people said they like it; it actually applied to the Mozilla project in a usually-tangential way.
7 Which, of course, turns out to make it a [useful] challenge for me, the writer, to grab your attention, using only a single paragraph!
8 This whole problems screams out for a solution addressed by that Web 2.0-ey concept of semantics; this seems like a solved problem, what with tags and feed readers that can filter, based on tags. I would gladly tag my posts with an agreed-upon tag, so that those not wanting the strictly-not-Mozilla-stuff could filter. In fact, I already do, but "blahblahblah" isn't a very standard tag. ;-)
Comments
I also like seeing people's non-Mozilla-related posts on planet, at least when they're not frequently repeated posts on the same non-Mozilla-related topic. However, the opposite camp won a few years ago when the top 3 posts on http://planet.mozilla.org/ also appeared on http://www.mozilla.org/ (this was before there was a http://www.mozilla.com/), and there was concern of a PR disaster. (See the minutes from the 2004-10-11 staff meeting ... oh, wait, google groups seems to have deleted them.)
If my memory is correct, there have also been some issues with the moderation of the schedule shown on planet (which tor also has full editorial control over).
Posted by: David Baron | February 25, 2007 7:51 PM
I've been known to kvetch about totally off-topic content on planet.mo, but I think it should really be a decision made by the author, and that the stream of content coming across there should be guided by a principal of "is this of interest to my colleagues?"
Skipping a post in one's RSS reader is pretty low cost, so I'd rather err on the side of seeing something interesting if I had my druthers.
Posted by: Mike Beltzner | February 25, 2007 7:54 PM
I was specifically told when I first got my blog added to planet.m.o to provide a feed that only contained my Mozilla-related posts, so that's what I did.
Posted by: Eric Shepherd | February 25, 2007 7:55 PM
The checkin comments (and the earlier annotations in the file itself) are absolutely the most terrifying thing I've ever read.
I guess you're lucky that you somehow were special enough to get silently filtered instead of silently removed outright ;)
Posted by: Smokey Ardisson | February 25, 2007 8:30 PM
Simple solution: unsubscribe from Planet; subscribe to feedHouse ( http://feedhouse.mozillazine.org/ ).
Posted by: Greg K Nicholson | February 25, 2007 11:16 PM
I *thought* planet.m.o was filtering my blog for Mozilla posts, and I told you so, but it turns out it actually isn't. It picks up the whole thing. I'm happy either way, though.
Posted by: Robert O'Callahan | February 25, 2007 11:47 PM
'I find myself thinking "Well, I don't really have anything to say about those four specific topics. So I guess I won't bother writing anything," mostly for fear that this stuff really is boring and no one wants to read it.'
That sounds dangerously like you're being censored. If so, by whom? MoCo, or perhaps your self-centered readers?
Anyway, I wouldn't worry about people not caring. No one cares about my little pet project, and they won't until I release. They may never care, even after I do release. But that's not the point. I still write about it and other stuff because I think someone out there might find it (the knowledge, not my actual work) useful someday.
Just write. This is your tale, your life. Tell it how you want to tell it. Bend if you want, but don't break, to the will of your readers. You're not planning on running for office, are you? :-)
(For what it's worth, when you get down to it, we're both professional writers - of both code and human-level statements. Never forget that.)
Just my two cents of encouragement.
-- Alex
Posted by: Alex Vincent | February 26, 2007 12:11 AM
I was going to point out Tim Rowley's previous views on the matter (it's not an official Mozilla project, it's just a little something I set up and it's mine to do as I want with), but he's done that himself in the bug.
Daniel Glazman has also previously argued about planet (and was removed as a result, before being added again), when he said something that wasn't complimentary about Mozilla and was asked to edit his blog so that it could be featured on planet without the undesirable bits.
Posted by: Michael | February 26, 2007 2:32 AM
For what it's worth, I love your GIMP art and posts about flying[1], etc etc. I like seeing the human, not-necessarily-directly-project-related side of folks.
Personally, I self-filter and only have my blog posts tagged as "Work" being syndicated to planet.mo, but I would be pretty ticked if I was trying to post something to p.mo and it got silently filtered out. I'm not sure who made these filtering decisions or why, but this is the sort of policy decision I very much believe should be proposed and discussed in mozilla.governance before being enacted.
I like the human side of planet.mo. I think it's valuable and important, and I hope it doesn't vanish entirely.
[1] Especially the GIMP art about flying.
Posted by: dria | February 26, 2007 7:17 AM
it's a good thing you had "tunderbird" in your post
Posted by: justin daly | February 26, 2007 8:54 AM
I haven't see the filters being applyed to you neither the revision you linked or the newer, which (as of three our ago) the Pinkerton's blog has been re-added.
@roc: duh?
[http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/index.rdf]
name = Robert O'Callahan
filter = ([Mm]ozilla[^z]|[Ff]irefox|[Gg]ecko|[Cc]airo|[Ww]eb|gfxTextRun|ATSUI|Pango|Uniscribe)
I've seen once a post yours on Mozillazine and don't showing on pmo. I believe it was the second about the new debugger.
Posted by: Asrail | February 26, 2007 6:03 PM
Alright... in order:
My thoughts exactly.
It's kinda like reading... well... any of our newsgroups. You're not going to be interested in every single thing that gets posted.
That's interesting; I was never told that when my feed was added to p.m.o, which I think illustrates the problem with a policy that isn't posted anywhere for anyone to refer to: you get inconsistent results. It looks like we'll correct that moving forward, so that's good.
Yeah... I don't know why I was filtered over outright removed.
Or get on both! ;-)
Interestingly, I'm listed in the right-hand pane, but I don't see this post in the list. Maybe I'm missing something.
Thanks for the encouragement, Alex.
I think it's important to point out that I believe Planet.m.o is a community resource.
As such, if the community wants a very narrow focus on planet, and wants to make that narrow focus the face of the Mozilla Project, that's fine. I'll disagree (loudly) with that, but if that's what people are looking for in the feed, then I will respect that, and tag and/or filter appropriately.
What was disconcerting for me was that the conversation that is taking place right now was not only not taking place, but was arguably being stifled. Now that we're talking about it, we can figure out what we want planet.m.o to look like, and how we can implement that technologically, so planet is a useful resource for all readers.
It's probably obvious that I pretty much disagree with every single one of those views. It's not particularly productive, especially in a project like we have, to tell people "Well, this is how I do it, and if you don't like it, too bad, because I'm in control."
And this is precisely what I (and I think a lot of other people) are afraid of: just because you don't like to hear what someone says doesn't mean that they should be silenced. Now, there's obviously a content question, which is entirely appropriate to discuss (obviously, if someone is constantly ranting about how much the 49ers Suck or whatever, that's clearly not mozilla-related), but it doesn't sound like that's what was happening.
And the frequency of that happening was particularly scary as well.
Me too! It looks like we've got the beginnings of some really cool discussions in the bug about how to make planet provide the feeds and posts that various audiences want.
I'm excited to see how it'll turn out; I obviously don't want to force people to read stuff they're just not interested in, but for myself, I like reading about people's lives and interests outside of Mozilla.
Look harder.
The filters on my stuff were removed at revision 2282; I re-added Pink's blog, per Asa, at rev 2329.
Posted by: Preed | February 26, 2007 6:30 PM
Ooooops... I had followed the link for Pinkerton's change on the configuration. Now I've seen yours, forgot this part of my above comment.
Posted by: Asrail | February 26, 2007 6:42 PM
You aren't the only person with a filter; if you grep the file you linked to for "filter", you can see I have one:
filter = ([Mm]ozilla[^z]|[Ff]irefox|[Gg]ecko|[Ff]oundation|[Mm]o[Ff]o|[Ff]ree software|[Tt]hunderbird|[Bb]ugzilla)
as do blake and roc.
tor told me that he was trying to keep the planet on-topic; for people who didn't have category feeds, he used a filter instead. He happily extended the keywords when I asked. If you look, you'll notice a lot of people have category-based feed URLs.
Posted by: Gerv | February 27, 2007 1:51 AM
I'm aware: 1 But, being among only three people being filtered, I guess I'm in good company.
He didn't mention that to me, nor could anyone point anyone to a community discussion about what was appropriate content for the community Planet... which was the point: that should be a matter of community discussion, not a single person, unilaterally enforcing a "secret" and never-discussed policy.
I, of course, have my own opinion about what is appropriate, but what's important is that there's a conversation happening now about it, as opposed to how it was being managed before.
I've said repeatedly I'll respect the policy the community agrees upon, whatever that may be.
Posted by: Preed | February 27, 2007 10:30 AM