We seem to keep having problems deciding what content to put on Planet Debian. I wonder to what extent this has to do with the software running the planet.

My experience with using ikiwiki to run Planet Debian upstream is that if a particular feed annoys readers, a page can easily be created that omits that feed (or feeds) while keeping everything else. Anyone can do this by creating a new wiki page and putting something like "!feeds/richard_stallman/*" in the PageSpec. So there's no real reason to drop any feeds for excessive or annoying content.

The Planet software makes this harder to do; you have to set up your own server running it, and manually keep your modified feed list up-to-date. So instead there's a general drive to more tightly limit what content is allowed on Planet Debian. The result is that interesting feeds are removed, and that other feeds are self-limited to only technical posts. None of this is making Planet Debian more interesting or useful.