Comparison between Planet Drupal and other planets
Posted on September 27th, 2008 at 8:47
Lately there has been some discussion about the number of posts (and their quality) on Planet Drupal.
Personally I don't think Planet Drupal is hard to follow because of the large number of posts. There are plenty of other high profile planets with far more posts per day.
Let's compare:
| Planet | Posts per day | Feeds aggregated |
|---|---|---|
| Mozilla | 18.2 | 234 |
| Ubuntu | 17.5 | 271 |
| Apache | 15.9 | 160 |
| GNOME | 14.1 | 254 |
| Drupal | 12.5 | 261 |
| Android | 7.6 | 21 |
| PHP | 6.6 | 97 |
| Eclipse | 6.3 | 169 |
Note: The number of posts per day is based on the Subscription trends for the last 30 days of my Google Reader.
The question whether all posts on Planet Drupal are on-topic is harder to answer but in my opinion Planet Drupal is doing just fine. I would say that at least 95% of all posts are Drupal-related. People familiar with Planet Apache will confirm that you have to look really hard to find any posts about Apache software among all those holiday pictures.
It is probably true that not all posts on Planet Drupal have the same high quality writing - I'm not even convinced that this posts has - but that is all part of the mission of Planet Drupal: "Planet Drupal aggregates broadly appealing, Drupal-related blog posts pertaining to the community at large (code, advocacy, marketing, infrastructure etc.)".
In the end, it is really easy to skip a post in your favorite feed reader, isn't it?
PS: I think it is far more annoying that the feed of Planet Drupal contains only teasers instead of full posts. Whenever something really interesting appears I have to click to read the full post. Most other planets only accept feeds with full posts.
I think, it is great that you have to visit the site when you want to read the full post. There could be important comments on the post. And you can see some nice Drupal blogs..
I think this is a good topic for discussion. Personally, I like the wide range of topics on Planet Drupal and I am glad that Planet Drupal accepts input from such a diverse community. I do think the day may be coming where Planet Drupal not only needs to deliver an "All" feed but also feeds divided by sub-topics (code, advocacy, marketing, system administration, general, etc).
My pet peeve has to do with quality of the content. For example, while I think Nick Lewis' post on Smashing Magazine is of value (perfect), I wish others would think twice before submitting the same information with no added value to Planet Drupal. For example, while I thought providing the links to Smashing Magazine was of benefit to my blog's readers I determined it added no value for what Nick already posted on Planet Drupal. Thus, in cases like these...I don't tag the content for Planet Drupal consumption. People need to think twice before they post.
As far as teasers, I have mixed viewpoints. I think most people who use teasers do it for one of two legitimate reasons:
However, there are definitely some planet contributors that only put a teaser in their post to lure people to their site. Perhaps a rule that allowed teasers only if the contributed post is so many characters long could solve this problem.
Sorry, for the lack of proof-read in my comment...I must have hit "post" instead of "preview". I hate when that happens. :-(
I have a pretty extreme pet peeve about off-topic planet posts.
I dread posts about:
* your family (your kids, your wife, your stupid dogs)
* your new gadgets (your iphone, your car, your new guitar)
* your vacations
* your adventures in the kitchen (sure i like pies but not being forced to hear about yours)
* your politics
* other mundane details of your life
I susbscribe to planet drupal to hear about (gasp) DRUPAL! it embaressed me to see twelve posts congratulating dries on his baby, or people complaining about bad wifi at a con.
on a positive note, i find the real posts on planet drupal to be of extremely high quality.
also, planet ubuntu is the worst offender by far. more than half the posts fall into one of the categories mentioned above.
What I find irritating is the waffle about all the various conferences and stuff. Occasionally, there's a gem of a post about themeing and developing with Drupal. Surely there's a way to filter out the naval gazing posts from the planet feed and focus on posts that give REAL VALUE to the community?
What is so great about the WordPress planet is that you get pointed to useful resources that help you get the most out of an installation of WP. People new to Drupal need more info on how to build a robust site with it. Instead, what they get is a lot of rambling about Drupalcon Szeged - I'm going, are you going? I'm in Szeged, yay! I went to Drupalcon Szeged - blah blah blah.
And as for the teasers as mentioned by BryanSD, I like them that way. Visiting the site gives me a feel for the writer, and I also insist on posting useful Drupal posts to social media sites to help get the word out. Plus, with the amount of cruft on the Drupal Planet, teasers make it easier to skim read and ignore the aforementioned Szeged posts!
I will say I am the absolute opposite.
IMO there is nothing wrong with off topic posts on the planet. and I find it offensive when anonymous readers try to censor "Off Topic" posts with their comments. Yes - offensive. Deeply so.
If people want such a thing, maybe create another planet with the name of "Drupal technical" or something.
My rule of thumb: if it is about Drupal and only Drupal and has importance to the community, it should be on the front page, NOT exclusively on the planet.
oops - put the wrong link in the above details (is it possible to remove?).
Another thing - Drupal Is People.
IMO what makes it special is the people involved.
I just wish there were an RSS filter for planet drupal -- one that lets you subscribe to just code or marketing or site-showcases, etc. I hate the 50% drupal camps and "i'm going to drupalcon too!" posts that I have to sift through every day before I can get into some meaty posts.
and don't get me started on Mollom... it's ironic that it's a spam-prevention service yet it eats a good 25% of planet drupal
IMHO, teasers are better. It's true that you have to go to some other page to read whole post, but teaser are more compact (and that's better for me)
It could be interesting to see comparison of Drupal Planet, Joomla Planet and WordPress Planet
I like full posts in my RSS Reader (makes reading much quicker) and don't understand why there isn't a choice. People who don't want to make their full feed available can simply add a teaser feed. On the subscription side, it would be nice to be able to choose teaser or full.
Planet Drupal is one of the best planet feeds I'm following for on-topic. I haven't seen too much I'd consider off-topic.
There's lots of posts I don't read in full. I prefer scanning and deciding for myself to other solutions. Sometimes the repetition level on a particular topic can get a bit much but again, it's easy to skip.
teasers are better........ its my opinion
intresting read thanks!
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