What's a blog planet for?

It seems everybody is ranting in Planet Debian about what our planet should be about, what content should be acceptable, whether technical-only, Debian-only, everything-goes… Even archiving the posts via a mailing-list interface has been mentioned. Besides, following the planet seems to have become mandatory to people linked to Debian, almost as mandatory as following debian-devel-announce. I won’t bother linking to other posts in this topic, as they are far too many. The whole discussion seems childlike and sterile to me. For different people, Debian means different things - This topic has come up in the planet a couple of times in the past (funny, hah, using posts in mutually-unlinked personal blogs as a way to follow a discussion). And a planet should IMHO cover a specific use case: Providing a place for those of us who think of Debian as a social frame, and value knowing -exactly- the type of information each of us publishes in his/her blog: What’s up with Debian-related people’s lifes. Of course, a large fraction of this information should be somehow technical or Debian-related. But I do value having a place to learn about my peers’ life accomplishments. To know if they are going through a hard time. To understand the personal interests of them. Maybe to learn I’m not the only DD who enjoys running (although I’m far under Dirk’s or Christian’s league) or cycling in a big city (although I lack MJ’s political involvement and dedication). I actually like trying to find some logic in senseless Steve-like messages, there are some funny bits in his stuff. I like knowing I can share what I feel important about my life in a simple way with my peers, without having them drop over to my site. And yes, of course I do enjoy learning about the ongoing technical work of the bunch, even if it is often in fields I would not wander into at all (i.e. Simon’s frustration with writing device drivers for Windows, Michal’s advances on Gammu). So… Please stop over-regulation. Leave the planet as it is. If you don’t like it, come up with a way to filter and maybe adjust its content based on user profiles. But don’t try to censor it.

Comments

John Lewis 2008-04-22 04:36:24

What’s a blog planet for?

I started off by thinking there is too much non-tecknical content in DebianPlanet but having read your comment I have changed my mind and now agree with you that some of those non-technical blogs do add value for the community.