Like Clint Adams, I disagree with the opinion of Philip Kern with respect to not allowing comments on blog postings.

I do not trust random PHP scripts on my webserver. I don’t want my blog to have write permissions (especially since badly written PHP scripts is by far the most common intrusion vector). I don’t want dozens of plugins from different authors (who may or may not be able write secure code) in my cgis. I want to upload my blog postings with ssh to my server. And no, comments won’t work that way, so what?

Of course I do update blog postings with backlinks sent to me by email (you remember email? the thing everybody used before planets were invented, and when mailing lists weren’t so high-traffic you need 4h a day to keep up with) when they are really useful. I don’t claim my blog is “democratic” and about free speech, but only that it reflects my own opinion.

Yes, we are abusing the blog medium somehow by “talking” this way. And sooner or later (as more people are being added to planet.debian) it will suffer from the same problems as the mailing lists did: Too much volume. Then someone will probably come up with something new. Forums btw. are neither new nor a solution, they are even worse.

Btw, I can’t remember that there is a requirement to have a debian account to be listed, you just need some DD to add your blog. Try setting up a Debian category, posting some useful stuff and then ask some DD to add you)

Ah, and yes, planet Debian is broken every now and then. For example it gives out incorrect permalinks for my blog posts (what is so difficult about isPermaLink=”no”?). I have the impression planet was written without ever looking at the RSS specs. And without looking at the XML specs either, judging from earlier issues (e.g. breaking whenever anyone uses an ampersand in a posting title)