that’s whacked

a steaming pile of p.o.o.

Thursday, Nov 30. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris

there was a somewhat heated debate about p.o.o. last night on #opensolaris. glynn seems to be taking some flack for maintaining it, mainly on 4 points:

1. it duplicates information already available on opensolaris.org/os/blogs
2. it’s elitist, or the “why won’t you add MY blog?” dilemma
3. it’s got non-OpenSolaris related blog entries in it
4. it’s not community-driven

so, for the record, i’m firmly in support of the planet. i think it rocks. there, that’s out of the way. you may proceed to read the rest of my biased blog post now.

it duplicates information already available on opensolaris.org/os/blogs

rebuttal: some of us find it frustrating to read blogs on opensolaris.org/os/blogs because it only shows excerpts rather than the full entry. additionally, not to disparage it, but there is a lower barrier of entry to opensolaris.org/os/blogs. it’s more inclusive of anyone in the opensolaris community. p.o.o. is about aggregating blogs of opensolaris.org contributors, rather than participants. this is an important distinction to make. and lastly, os.o/os/blogs contains non-English blogs. again, this is fine for the main site – but it detracts from my reading experience as a retard-who-can’t-read-any-other-language-other-than-English.

it’s elitist, or the “why won’t you add MY blog?” dilemma

this one bugs me. glynn has said from the beginning, there is an editorial policy in place. the nature of editorials is such that they tend to be polarising. you can’t please everyone all of the time. and this is why i don’t envy glynn in his position of maintaining the planet. he has, and will continue to have to make, hard decisions on who he adds to the planet. and undoubtedly, he is going to piss some people off. again, it’s the difference between a contributor and a participant… and there’s not always a clear line of distinction between when you cross from being a participant to a contributor. yes, he may not always get it right… but tough – that’s the decision he makes, and he will draw flack for it for being in that editorial role. the best you can do is convince him otherwise. point out that your blog entries serve a valuable role to the OpenSolaris community. point out all your mailing list discussions. point out the fact that you hang out in IRC and give stevel flack for all the times he kills the os.o website. this is contributing. it’s not always just about code.

it’s got non-OpenSolaris related blog entries in it

p.o.o. says at the very top-right-hand side: “Planet OpenSolaris is a window into the world, work and lives of OpenSolaris hackers and contributors.” it’s not an aggregation of OpenSolaris related blog content. it’s an aggregation of OpenSolaris contributors’ blogs. i find this stuff totally valuable. yes, there might be (is?) a need for a planet of purely OpenSolaris-related technical content, but i find the non-OpenSolaris content to be extremely valuable in providing context into who a person is, what they’re like, and what they do. i love reading Jim’s blog entries about Japan with all his photos. i like reading Dennis’s diatribes and rants about Linux. these provide context into who Jim and Dennis are… it’s insight into the people, and thus it’s insight into the community of contributors and hackers.

it’s not community-driven

now this one just pisses me off. glynn did this in his spare time. he’s not paid to work on OpenSolaris website stuff… that’s the tonic-team (which i’m on). he’s a JDS hacker. yes, he works for Sun; but he did this as a community thing – and we hosted it on grommit before we got eventual approval to host it on the main site. if anyone else in the community had had the same idea, i believe 100% completely that we would have ended up with the same result. it would just have a different editor. the nature of a Planet is such that it’s either going to be a free-for-all-add-everyone aggregation (which IMHO is what planetsolaris turned into) which devalues it to its readership; or it’s going to follow a selective editorial policy…. which again, will inevitably piss some people off – but provide continual value to its readership.

so there. that’s my counter-rant to the various p.o.o. arguments i’ve seen over the past couple of days.

i for one, welcome our new p.o.o. overloads

btw, on a tangential note: if you want to see all the hackergotchis, you can view them here