PlanetUbuntuEditorialPolicy
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| 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. |
Planet Ubuntu, an aggregate of blogs by Ubuntu members, is a general window into the lives of contributors to the project. Occasionally items show up there in aggregation which don't meet with the spirit of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, and those items are then removed. |
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| Covers planet.ubuntu.com | Covers [[http://planet.ubuntu.com|Planet Ubuntu]]. |
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| Policies need to be created for the following situations: | Introduce a brief disclaimer into the sidebar on Planet Ubuntu: {{{ Planet Ubuntu is a window into the world, work and lives of Ubuntu developers and contributors. Opinions are those of the individuals and do not represent Ubuntu as a whole. If you disagree with an item here, we encourage you to write up a witty rejoinder and have it posted here too! Woo readers to your views with charm and style, please don't engage in personal arguments. You might want to review the Code of Conduct, and the Bloggers Code of Conduct.}}} |
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| * 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 |
=== Confidential Information === |
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| == Outstanding Issues == == BoF agenda and discussion == |
Ubuntu members who publish blogs on Planet Ubuntu should endeavour to ensure that company confidential information is not posted there. The planet administrators will make a reasonable judgement about the sensitivity of information in blogs re-published there, and will consider requests for the removal of content on those grounds. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to establish the confidentiality of any given piece of information, and will not automatically remove posts on request. You can contact the [[https://launchpad.net/~canonical-sysadmins|Planet sysadmins]] here. It is imperative that where a post is removed, the relevant user is contacted and respectfully explained the reason why - miscommunication is the main problem in such situations. === Inappropriate Posts === The Code of Conduct applies to all actions by Ubuntu members, including posting to their blogs. Where a community member is offended by content on another member's blog, the best approach will generally be to attempt to resolve the issue peacefully through respectful discussion. In extremely serious cases and in the event that it is not possible to resolve the issue, the CommunityCouncil can mediate the problem. By and large, we take a "liberal Western" view of matters moral. That means we don't blush too much when sex is discussed, though we prefer to keep it practical, to keep personal preferences private, and never to criticize or belittle others on gender or sexuality grounds. If you are contacted by a community member in regard to blog posts, we would ask you to respond to their comments politely and in good faith. Don't let a difference of style or opinion spiral into a conflict which will make it impossible for you to collaborate with that person on matters of mutual interest. No single "set of rules" would let us all get along - but we expect everyone in the Ubuntu community to make a real effort to treat one another respectfully, across great cultural divides. * possibly break apart the legal and confidential sections * add specific examples * consider http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/BCC === Language === As a rule of thumb, English should be considered the "lingua franca" of Planet Ubuntu. There are a number of language and locale specific Planets run by Ubuntu LoCo Teams, which are a great way for teams to get news out in their local language. However, the official Ubuntu Planet should attempt to use English where possible to reach the widest possible audience. |
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| * 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). |
See [[/talk]] |
Launchpad Entry: ubuntu-planet-editorial-policy
Created: 2007-05-01
Contributors: CoreyBurger, MatthewEast
Packages affected: None
See also: PlanetUbuntu
Summary
Planet Ubuntu, an aggregate of blogs by Ubuntu members, is a general window into the lives of contributors to the project. Occasionally items show up there in aggregation which don't meet with the spirit of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, and those items are then removed.
Scope
Covers Planet Ubuntu.
Implementation
Introduce a brief disclaimer into the sidebar on Planet Ubuntu:
Planet Ubuntu is a window into the world, work and lives of Ubuntu developers and contributors. Opinions are those of the individuals and do not represent Ubuntu as a whole. If you disagree with an item here, we encourage you to write up a witty rejoinder and have it posted here too! Woo readers to your views with charm and style, please don't engage in personal arguments. You might want to review the Code of Conduct, and the Bloggers Code of Conduct.
Confidential Information
Ubuntu members who publish blogs on Planet Ubuntu should endeavour to ensure that company confidential information is not posted there. The planet administrators will make a reasonable judgement about the sensitivity of information in blogs re-published there, and will consider requests for the removal of content on those grounds. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to establish the confidentiality of any given piece of information, and will not automatically remove posts on request.
You can contact the Planet sysadmins here.
It is imperative that where a post is removed, the relevant user is contacted and respectfully explained the reason why - miscommunication is the main problem in such situations.
Inappropriate Posts
The Code of Conduct applies to all actions by Ubuntu members, including posting to their blogs.
Where a community member is offended by content on another member's blog, the best approach will generally be to attempt to resolve the issue peacefully through respectful discussion. In extremely serious cases and in the event that it is not possible to resolve the issue, the CommunityCouncil can mediate the problem.
By and large, we take a "liberal Western" view of matters moral. That means we don't blush too much when sex is discussed, though we prefer to keep it practical, to keep personal preferences private, and never to criticize or belittle others on gender or sexuality grounds.
If you are contacted by a community member in regard to blog posts, we would ask you to respond to their comments politely and in good faith. Don't let a difference of style or opinion spiral into a conflict which will make it impossible for you to collaborate with that person on matters of mutual interest. No single "set of rules" would let us all get along - but we expect everyone in the Ubuntu community to make a real effort to treat one another respectfully, across great cultural divides.
- possibly break apart the legal and confidential sections
- add specific examples
consider http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/BCC
Language
As a rule of thumb, English should be considered the "lingua franca" of Planet Ubuntu. There are a number of language and locale specific Planets run by Ubuntu LoCo Teams, which are a great way for teams to get news out in their local language. However, the official Ubuntu Planet should attempt to use English where possible to reach the widest possible audience.
Comments
See /talk
PlanetUbuntuEditorialPolicy (last edited 2008-08-06 16:27:05 by localhost)