Where best to discuss potential blog posts?

As an example, I think we could write a good blog post about our sysadmin challenges and the move to OSUOSL:

OSUOSL blog post thoughts

Besides describing the move to OSUOSL and thanking them, we should emphasize how sysadmin challenges cost us years of delays:

  • developer (and other volunteer) time spent on sysadmin (instead of someone particularly interested)
  • hosting our own email (crazy, but also crazy that it’s crazy)
  • our building of integrated tools early on to avoid the hassles and downsides of existing tools
  • maybe mention here (though could be separate blog post) the whole adventure with Gitorious through GitLab etc (mentioning newer things like SourceHut existing now etc etc)
  • All framed as a story about the challenges of running a FLO project with FLO tools
  • Acknowledge the question of whether we should have / could have paid for sysadmin services rather than sink valuable dev time into these things
  • The assertion that while we have tons to do still, OSUOSL and solid tools is finally a clear place from which we can do the rest of our work and get launched

It might seem to make sense to post this in the #announcements:blog-posts category, but it’s not an announcement. Maybe this is something for #clear-the-path:outreach or even a private team area?

I know that Ghost can hold drafts, which is where we’ve put ideas for blog posts before, but that doesn’t get regular attention and isn’t a good place for discussion of the posts (and whether to post what).

What would be the best place on the forum for such discussions? Do we need a new place?

1 Appreciation

#announcements:blog-posts is definitely not the place to post; most posts there should be automatic, generated by the discourse <-> ghost integration.

I think it fits best in #clear-the-path:outreach. In general, if the potential post is very closely tied to a particular topic, I think it’d also be okay to post in that topic’s category.[1] If you’re just looking from feedback from the team, #restricted:team or even #restricted:drafts would be ok. But overall I favor outreach.


  1. Here, maybe that's #clear-the-path:ops, but that's limited to people with trust level 2+, so it wouldn't work if you wanted input from the general public. Or project management, if the majority of the post was about choice of tooling. ↩︎

2 Appreciations

Makes sense.

Upon reflection, I think this highlights something about my thinking. It is about outreach really, but I also have some sort of general interest in telling this story to the world for whoever’s benefit. Putting it in outreach as a topic almost forces me to ask, “how does this serve the Snowdrift.coop mission and goals?” such that I need to check that this is indeed worthwhile from an outreach perspective. That’s probably a good thing to be asking anyway.

I think this is a good outreach post because it helps outside people have perspective and trust in us. It also highlights the extent of our FLO dedication and our integrity.