Planet GNOME Guidelines

Planet GNOME plays an important role inside the GNOME community. It is so successful that very few people could imagine GNOME without the Planet now. It cannot be ignored that this success is in part due to the strong editorship which ensures that the quality of the aggregated blogs is high.

Planet GNOME is defined as "a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors", and this is something we want to keep. Here are some guidelines that should help illustrate how the editors work and decide. For clarity reasons, we chose to publish those as a list of FAQ.

About Planet GNOME

What is Planet GNOME?

Planet GNOME is an aggregator of blogs of GNOME contributors, with content relevant to the GNOME community.

Who maintains Planet GNOME?

Planet GNOME is maintained by a team of editors. The current team is composed of Daniel Mustieles García and Felipe Borges.

How can I contact the editors?

File a new issue in GitLab. If it really isn't mean for GitLab, try to send them an email. Unless the issue you're facing is really urgent or you already sent a mail but didn't get a reply, please try to avoid pinging the editors directly on IRC: they'll likely reply that you should send them a mail anyway

Who created Planet GNOME?

Jeff Waugh has created Planet GNOME in 2003 (June or July?). It has been a hit all around the world since its very beginning because of all the GNOME rock stars!

Is it possible to track the requests related to Planet GNOME?

There is a Planet GNOME GitLab for this. Here is the link to the current requests in the queue.

I contacted the editors, but I didn't get any reply in two weeks!

Okay, this might happen. First, ping the editors again in the bug or on IRC. If you still don't get a reply, you should contact the GNOME Foundation Board so that they are aware of the issue and can work on fixing it.

Being added to Planet GNOME

Are there rules to decide who should be on Planet GNOME?

Strictly speaking, there is only one rule: the decision belongs to the editors. However, this FAQ highlights a set of guidelines that should help you understand how the editors work.

What are the basic requirements?

You obviously first need to have a blog. Seriously. The editors are helpful, but without a blog, they can't add you. It is better to have a blog with already at least a few posts so that the editors can evaluate the quality of your blog.

You need to be a GNOME Foundation member or a participant in Google Summer of Code/Outreachy with GNOME.

You should also make sure that the feed of your blog is valid thanks to services like Feed Validator or the W3C Feed Validation Service. We only accept feeds containing full posts as we don't want to force our readers to click in each aggregated blog post to read the full content.

You also need to provide your IRC nickname.

Finally, unless you really don't want to have a hackergotchi, the editors will probably block the addition of your blog until you send the hackergotchi. So work on your hackergotchi before requesting to be added.

Here is the checklist:

• File a new issue in PGO's Gitlab.

• Provide your full name
• Provide your IRC nickname
• Provide a link to your blog
• Provide a link to your feed

• Provide a hackergotchi (they will be reviewed to check if they match the guidelines)

• All the posts syndicated should be in English, so you either blog strictly in English or you use a special category for your posts.
• Your RSS/ATOM feed should be configured to show the full post (disable the "read the full story" link)
• Indicate that you are participating in GSoC/Outreachy (if that's the case).

How do I create a hackergotchi?

You can follow the hackergotchi guidelines. Alternatively, you can ask the art team to help you by creating a wiki page with a link to your photo or your photo as an attachment and adding the request to the bottom of the requests list. You can see how your picture will look as a hackergotchi by adding a layer mask in GIMP and clearing out everything around your head. You can then save it as .xcf file and file an art request for people on the art team to add the shadow.

I am a GNOME Foundation member, is it enough?

Being a GNOME Foundation member is mandatory, but it doesn't help evaluate the quality of your blog. It is not enough, and you should still look objectively at your blog first to know if it will be of interest to Planet GNOME readers.

What is a good blog for Planet GNOME?

While there is no clear-cut definition of what is a good blog for Planet GNOME, it certainly helps to keep in mind that we want Planet GNOME to be most interesting to the readers. This is why we have editors. However, there are a few things that you can easily check to make sure that your blog would make a good addition:

• the target audience of your posts is not restricted to your family or close friends only. We want readers of Planet GNOME to read and care about most of your posts.
• some posts should be relevant to the GNOME community, either because they're related to GNOME, some underlying projects (like freedesktop.org projects), some technologies using GNOME, etc. or because it's a topic most people in our community care about, like freedom. Keep in mind that we cannot list all topics that are of interest to the GNOME community here.
• the posts are English only. The point is that if you mix Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Italian, Spanish, it will look nice, but it will be a nightmare for the readers. There are other Planets for various languages: having multiple Planets is how we want to encourage the diversity of languages in the GNOME community -- without forcing people to have to skip posts in languages they cannot understand. We can eventually help you setup a planet for your language if needed.

What should I do to get added to Planet GNOME?

File a new issue with the URL of your feed (note that you can use a feed for a category or a language in your blog) and attach/give a link to your hackergotchi (unless you don't want one). It generally helps to write a few words about you and your contributions to GNOME, or why you think your blog should appear on Planet GNOME: keep in mind that the editors might not know you. Remember that "a few words" generally doesn't mean "five long paragraphs" You should get a reply in less than a week if everything is fine.

My request to be added got denied. What can I do?

The answer from the editors also contained an explanation of why your request got denied. If you disagree with this explanation, talk around you with other people. If those other people are all on your side, have them talk to the editors. If there's still no resolution, please mail the GNOME Foundation Board (cc the editors) and explain the situation.

Can I put my identi.ca/twitter feed on Planet GNOME?

No. But there are plans around those lines. If you want to help, please mail the editors!

I started contributing to GNOME two months ago and I want to be on Planet GNOME.

Great to see you contributing to GNOME! We'd like you to stay involved for a bit longer first, though. Note that this is not a rule and we'll be glad to make exceptions

I stopped contributing to GNOME two years ago. Can I still stay there?

Sure, no problem. We still love you Past contributors often stay involved in areas that are of interest to GNOME (even if not directly related to GNOME), so we're not worried about the content of your blog.

I just opened my blog and I want it to be on Planet GNOME.

We generally try to avoid this. Please use your blog a bit first -- no need to write 10 posts in a week either. Just use it normally. It's important that you show the quality of your blog. Of course, you can also try to bribe the editors. It might work...

But I created my blog for this specific post I'm writing right now and I really want this to appear on Planet GNOME.

Just ask other people on Planet GNOME to relay your post. There's no doubt that if the topic is interesting, it will attract people. It's also a good test to demonstrate to the editors that you should really be on Planet GNOME.

Being on Planet GNOME

Do I have to only blog about GNOME things?

No. Planet GNOME is a good way to know the contributors. This means we're happy to have you post about your life, or the latest recipe you cooked (especially if you add a photo!). Keep in mind, though, that if you don't post anything of interest to most of the community, people will not enjoy your posts.

Is there any restriction on what I can say on Planet GNOME?

As long as you respect the Code of Conduct, there's no restriction: we don't want to see censorship. Generally speaking, we believe that common sense will prevail.

Is there any restriction on my presence on Planet GNOME?

There's no restriction, but just keep in mind that readers probably don't want to read five posts from you in a row. Or well, they'd better be really really interesting

Are there cases where my blog could be removed by the editors?

The only case we can think of at the moment is if you stopped being involved in GNOME and you only blog about topics that are not relevant to GNOME or free software. We will contact you first to let you know and discuss this.

Oh, another case is you not respecting the Code of Conduct repetitively. But we're confident this will not happen.

Managing my presence on Planet GNOME

My posts don't appear correctly on Planet GNOME. The time for my posts is wrong on Planet GNOME.

Please first check that your feed is valid and has no error with services like Feed Validator or the W3C Feed Validation Service. If everything looks fine there, file a new issue.

I want to change my feed URL.

Make sure your feed validates by using services like Feed Validator or the W3C Feed Validation Service. If this is the case, then just send a mail to the editors.

I want to only have selected posts from by blog.

It might happen that you blog in various languages, or that you only want your GNOME-related posts to appear in Planet GNOME. Most blog software provides a per-language or per-category feed, so this is possible to achieve. Please file a new issue.

I want to update my hackergotchi.

That can be a good idea, especially if you want people to recognize you at conferences Please follow the hackergotchi guidelines and submit your new hackergotchi by filling a new issue. By default, we like to keep old hackergotchis since it's a nice way to celebrate our history. But if you feel strong about removing your old hackergotchi, add a note about this in your request.

I want to be removed from Planet GNOME.

We won't force you to stay on Planet GNOME But it's always a bit sad to see people leave... Just file a new issue.

I have a git account. Can I update my stuff directly?

No: this is a module with maintainers, so don't do this. All such changes will be reverted and you will be publicly blamed for stealing bananas that Rupert wanted to eat.

Using Planet GNOME

I don't like reading the posts by Rupert the Monkey. Can we remove this blog from Planet GNOME?

At the bottom of the web page, you can uncheck a list of blogs that you don't want to read on Planet GNOME. This should cover your use case. If you're using a feed reader to read Planet GNOME, we accept patches

I really don't like reading the posts by Rupert the Monkey. And everybody agrees with me.
I've been really offended by the last five posts by Rupert the Monkey. Please stop aggregating this blog.

If for some reason, you feel very very strong about removing a blog from Planet GNOME, file a new issue. But keep in mind we won't remove blogs without a very good rationale.

blogs.oracle.com

For blogs.oracle.com, please provide the Atom feed. For RSS the pgo aggregator sometimes shows HTML (when atom:summary is present in the RSS feed).