[kwlug-disc] KWLUG Planet

[Paul Nijjar]

One feature request for the new website was a "KWLUG Planet": an
aggregator of KWLUG members writing about FLOSSy topics. 

This is a good idea. I have not implemented it yet in the new Drupal
site, but how hard could it be? (tm) . But if we do this, we need to
ensure that there is quality content being aggregated on a regular
basis. 

Here are some sensible requirements that come to mind: 

- Real blogs, not microblogs: it would be easy to hook up the KWLUG
  GNU Social instance to the aggregator, but that is a bad quality
  experience -- real blogs get flooded out by the tweetstorms. 
- Sufficient content: I feel it is not worth putting together a planet
  if we have fewer than one update per month. From KWLUG bloggers I
  follow, I think that is a high standard to meet. Many of us do not
  blog much, and some of us blog less about FLOSSy things than other
  topics. 
- Relevant content: the blog posts should be FLOSSy, as much as other
  topics are close to our hearts. Spammy sales pitches or endless
  company press releases are probably not good content either.
- Varied content: if one or two blogs are providing all the updates,
  then we lose the community aspect.

Consider this the first call for participants. If you blog about
FLOSSy things and would be interested in being part of the KWLUG
Planet, please contact me on or offlist. In order to participate you
will need an RSS feed that filters your posts so that only ones
relevant to the planet will be included. 

It would also be good to put together a shadowy unaccountable cabal of
moderators who can make difficult judgements about whether particular
blogs/posts are suitable for inclusion. I would like to keep this
exercise as friendly and friction-free as possible, but given the
large number of requests we receive to provide advertising space on
kwlug.org, I anticipate tricky situations will come up. If you would
like to be part of this then let me know.

- Paul

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org