Noise on Planet Maemo
 

I have loved Planet Maemo ever since I discovered it; it's a great source of (usually) reliable information, coming directly from experts and people deeply involved in the community.

I first noticed a change when recently a few blogs were aggregated that basically all repeated each other's content - content that I'd read before either here on t.m.o. or elsewhere. The kind of content I would blog about myself. I thought I could cope with that because maybe after a while, those blogs would develop and provide genuine content.

Now I even find tweets from twitter syndicated to planet Maemo, which was the last straw for me and made me write this.

What I'd be interested in:

• Am I the only one who thinks it's getting too much recently? If so, just forget about it and I'll subscribe to selected blogs without relying on the planet. ;)
• I know that how to deal with the planet and which blogs to syndicate was a topic every now and then here on t.m.o., usually along the lines of "there should be more end user oriented content". - I used to support that, now I don't any more. - Aside from being mentioned every now and then here, is there an ongoing discussion about the planet policy somewhere (wiki, mailing list?) that I missed?
• Do any of you subscribe to the (community-filtered) http://maemo.org/news/items.xml instead of the planet? Does that work (as in: Would I miss relevant information that way?) - It's cruel to do this because you don't actively partivipate in the useful ranking process then, but still...

If this comes across too negatively, I apologize... I still read the planet first thing in the morning and I've yet to find a better alternative; also, if things stay as they are now it might still be acceptable once I get used to it. It's just that I see the danger that in 3 months, there'll be 20 posts/day (or 20 tweets/hour) all pointing to the same video on youtube.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Sorry to hear about the lack of original content. I'm noticing the same thing. Sadly, my site isn't getting included in the aggregation yet, and I've been waiting weeks already. Maybe its payback for not making enough friends. LOL! Go figure!

Once the device has been launched, we'll all have more to talk about. Right now, its a chase for news, with little else to cover since most of the bloggers are Symbianites with little Maemo experience, and nothing new is being announced except morale busting delays.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

I was debating whether to ask for my blog to be aggregated - but I don't even have an n900 yet! Anything I write will be decidedly 'end user' so I was holding off.

I suspect the 300 are still too busy testing etc to worry about blogging. ;)

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

If you find Planet Maemo too noisy why don't follow http://maemo.org/news where things are already filtered and what is relevant anyway gets to the highlights almost always?

christexaport, I'm sorry to hear about this. It might have been missed. Can you re-send the request to the same address? I promise fast answer this time.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Thanks, qgil. Can you reverify that email address? Maybe that is the issue. We've sent 3 requests. I'm sure my administrator thinks its all my fault. I hope it isn't, or I'd feel really bad. I'm sure its just a case of being too busy.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Planet Maemo is the big busy "everything about Maemo in blogs" by design, and News is the filtered view of only interesting stuff. So when you have time, use Planet, and when you're busy use News.

BTW, thumbs-up is not the only contributing factor to posts rising to the News page, we also take delicious bookmarks, blog links and other things into account...

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

That's very interesting. Missed that aspect completly.

If this is what it's supposed to be, then everything's fine. I used to see the planet as "interesting stuff" and the filtered News as "where you see the highlights if you only go to maemo.org weekly".

I guess I'll just give News a try and see what I'd miss. ;)

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

You mean the planet@ email address? We have got several requests through it in the past weeks.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Well, Planet Maemo is an automatic aggregator. It is not supposed to be selective about what it aggregates. Having said that, there is a list on the right, titled "Subscriptions" that lists all the blogs aggregated at Planet Maemo. Is there some way to configure this subscription list for each maemo.org user?

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Benny, I just hope my recent endeavours are not part of the "noise" you're speaking of... :-)

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Unfortunately it's a bad compromise, as you're still missing out on a lot of stuff when you only follow news.

Personally, I think the easy answer here is that tweet aggregation is over the line. End of story. ;)

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Benny, it's a blip.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Nope, you're not alone. Du(|tri|quadru)plicates, articles spread over several posts, video-of-random-app posts, tweets etc all take their toll. I'm tempted to become a bit aggressive with the thumbs down button lately.

I tried it for a while, but I found that I missed too many relevant (to me, apparently my interests don't exactly coincide with popular opinion) posts. YMMV.

I expect/hope that it's a temporary thing and S/N will improve once retail devices start shipping, we'll see...

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Actually, Maemo News has a feature for adding your Attention Profile into the calculations. This way the system takes into account the things you've favourited in the past, plus your delicious bookmarks if you use that.

Currently the system isn't being used, but at least if your maemo.org account is old enough you can see what attention data it has gathered for you on the site.

If enough people find the idea of "personalized" Maemo News useful, we could start testing it with some group of people.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Oh, absolutely. In fact that was a hot topic some time back with favorable responses.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

There is also a Brainstorm on making maemo.org/news more customizable for one's needs.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Great! Added a Solution about attention profiling there

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

That's very interesting, but it thinks I don't like "community", "freesoftware" and "nokia n800" which couldn't be further from the truth :-( Sometimes you bury a post because it's a bad post, regardless of subject matter.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

What I'm wondering about is what that "Taking A Page From DF" article doing as the #1 article in maemo.org/news. Only 1 voted for it and it comes from an unknown author.

EDIT: looks like all the noise is coming from that same poster with this icon:
http://friendfeed-media.com/p-e5178c...6b-medium-1000
Check out his posts at : http://maemo.org/news/planet-maemo/
EDIT 2: Ah, and it looks like Planet Maemo is subscribed to his feed. :( http://friendfeed.com/firefoxmobile

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

I personally would ban tweets from there. The only reason I keep on using RSS reader is because it can be used offline, and a 3-word tweet with an URL doesn't help.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Apparently I pay attention to Dave Neary, Quim, and "awesomeness". :)

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

But the first two imply the third, no?

(Personally, I love me some "maemo" "announcements" and hate that "general" "blackberry" "email" "database".)

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Good point. Maybe tweets need their own page?

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

For some reason, ours hasn't made it to the aggregator. My administrator blames me, deep inside, and I don't think he's really caring much now, so I have to feel the burn for the supposed blame. I told him it was just a simple matter of time, but he just dismisses it. So its my formerly bad attitude and tantrums that have M-F blocked, in his eyes.

He'll get over it and resend it later. Just have to let him make me feel guilty for awhile...

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Looks like I'm a huge fan of mobility.

news, not so much.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

I will talk to the Mozilla team about the feed they aggregated recently to see if they can provide us something that doesn't include tweets.

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

Why not allow users to choose feeds they subscribe to within Planet Maemo? I thought this feature was present at maemo.org at some time?

Re: Noise on Planet Maemo
 

The "problem" with the Firefox Mobile feed is that it is a feed of feed in itself. They have removed the Tweeter feed so you should get only news and regular blog posts from there.