Dion Moult Seriously who ever reads this description.

Marketing noise or marketing contribution?

On 18 May 2010 with 5 comments

I follow a few feed planets here and there. For the unitiated (few), a planet is an aggregation of blog feeds, normally filtered by topic so that interested readers can get the scoop from multiple sources from as central location. An interesting point which crops up once in a while is what determines whether or not a blog post is appropriate for the planet. Often this is because a few posts get through that don’t have anything to do really with the topic but instead talks about their personal life.

The main argument used against this is that people join the feed planet in order to read about their favourite software or development, and that "nobody gives a rat’s ass about your personal life", thus diluting the rest of the content. While I agree with this in essence, I would like to ask people to reconsider what they consider as inappropriate.

I am here referring specifically to open-source projects’ planets. In my opinion the number one difference between the user-facing open-source concept and the user-facing company concept is that whilst a company seeks to inform its users, open-source projects should seek to engage their users. The difference is simply because an open-source community survives on the interest of the community. Now when people refer to the "community" of an open-source project, I believe a common misunderstanding is that it only refers to the group of people connected to the product. No. What it really should refer to is the group of people … connected to the rest of the group.

So when an open-source project engages its users, it shouldn’t do so on a community-project level, but instead on a community-community level. People should respect that the rest of the community has interests outside the product, and should take this not as noise but instead as a contribution to the community. After all, the lifeblood of any open-source project is the community. I believe that developing a relationship on the "people" level rather than the "product" level is vital for the long-run sustainability of a project. It’s a protectionist measure against elitism, of which larger projects are prone to, promotes feedback, empathetic development, and guards against bureaucracy.

Of course, this only applies to some planets depending on their purpose.

So, the next time you decide to tell your planet something totally irrelevant, don’t apologise.

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