Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad Entry: ubuntu-planet-editorial-policy

• Created: 2007-05-01

• Contributors: CoreyBurger, MatthewEast, JonoBacon

• Packages affected: None

• See also: PlanetUbuntu

Summary

Planet Ubuntu, an aggregate of community and Canonical employee blogs about Ubuntu, needs a clear editorial policy, to deal with issues of Canonical to community interactions, content disputes and the like. This spec attempts to create such a policy, for eventual approval by the Community Council.

Rationale

With the early May censorship of Planet Ubuntu by Canonical to prevent early disclosure of the Dell deal, it was made apparent that the current laissez-faire method of Planet editorial policy was not working. In that incident, Canonical removed two blogs by community members, as well as one by an employee. In addition, future content disputes or other company to community interactions might require action, issues which should have a clear policy for dealing with.

Use Cases

Jane is a community member and wishes to write about rumours of a pending Canonical announcement. She is concerned about being censored, given the previous experience with the Dell deal. She wants reassurance that provided her information comes from outside sources, she is free to post about such deals.

Mark runs Canonical and wants to make certain that future deals are not jeopardized by accidental release of information by his employees. He wants to be able to remove his employees blogs without concerns of censorship

Larry runs an Ubuntu business and one of his employees whose blog is syndicated on Planet Ubuntu was, either accidentally or not, leaked confidential information. He wants to be able to remove that blog from Planet Ubuntu in a confidential manner.

Sally has posted a followup to another blog post by an employee who leaked information. She wants to know what is going to happen to her blog post, now that the employees blog post has been pulled.

Eric objects to some content on their blog, content which does not violate the Code of Conduct. He wishes to know if there is a way and a venue to have a discussion about this content.

Scope

Covers planet.ubuntu.com

Implementation

Policies need to be created for the following situations:

• A Canonical employee posts confidential information
• A community member blogs about a rumour based on outside information
• A community member blogs about a rumour based on an employee blog
• Another company's employee posts confidential information on their blog and thus planet
• Somebody objects to the contents of a blog post

Outstanding Issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Comments

• JonathanCarter: In my opinion, the host of the aggregator service should have the right to remove posts that are inappropriate, or that may cause some kind of damage. Since Canonical 'hosts' Planet Ubuntu, will they be held responsible if a partner's product information gets leaked? I think it would be great to get some legal input here (Matthew, perhaps you can help?). I also don't think it's appropriate if people use a planet strictly for their own agendas. Their blogs should be just that, blogs, not a tool simply to push their agenda on Planet Ubuntu (not that we've really had much of a problem so far).

  • MatthewEast: The usual (slightly unsatisfactory answer) is that it will depend on the terms of the contract that Canonical has with a business partner. Generally, if there is a confidentiality provision and a leak occurs as a result of a Canonical employee, Canonical might be held liable (although the liability might not be particularly severe - it seems to me that generally no significant loss will be suffered by a leak occuring a day before a planned press release). In the event that news gets around purely as a result of community speculation, even if the speculation is hosted on an aggregator provided by Canonical, I don't see that Canonical would be liable for that as a matter of contract. Obviously illegal material creates different issues (such as those currently being addressed by Digg. I think the main focus of this spec should be on prevention - ensuring better internal communication within Canonical and better policies for Canonical's interaction with the community in general - some parts of Canonical have no relationship with the community at all and vice versa. Improving this will go a long way to solving the problem at source. In the case of the Dell news, someone taking the time to email the persons whose blogs had been removed from Planet with a sincere explanation was all that it would have taken to diffuse the situation. I'm disappointed and surprised that this wasn't done. I also agree with AndrewZajac that the issue touches all aspects of the community rather than just Planet Ubuntu.

• MartinAlbisetti: Maybe there could be a "planet.canonical.com" to make it clearer what is official from Canonical and what is from Ubuntu?

• ScottJamesRemnant: business partners of Canonical won't see the artificial distinction between the URLs.

• AndrewZajac: Should this spec cover other areas such as forums, fridge, mailing lists? Would Canonical have asked the forums to delete/jail posts if the news was leaked there instead of on the planet? If it happened on the mailing list, would that person be sactioned or prevented from further posting to the list, for example? Should there be a blanket editorial policy that applies to all aspects of the community?

• MaryGardiner: This might be impossible considering that Canonical is Ubuntu's major sponsor and does bizdev for Ubuntu, but perhaps the planet could be hosted elsewhere, like the forums? planetubuntucommunity.org or something. This is probably not the right fix (since news could also be leaked on the wiki or mailing lists or...), but perhaps it is one that should be discussed: act to decisively break any responsibility Canonical could be seen as having for the actions of non-employees on community forums. (cf AndrewZajac's comment also).

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