Fragmenting Information about Jobs

A comment on my previous post about my Linux Jobs Blog suggested that I shouldn’t fragment the information.

However I believe that fragmenting the information is ideal due to the ability of RSS syndication to drive the cost of coalescing the information to almost zero!

Currently there is a Linux job web site run by Linux Australia. It doesn’t have many adverts and isn’t even linked from the main Linux Australia web site. I believe that we can do better for the people who want Linux jobs and the people who have such jobs to advertise.

If you have a central site the jobs have to be moderated (which takes work and delays listing), the larger the area that the site covers the greater the work is to do this.

The solution is to have a distributed system with different people running listings for various regions and a syndication service to aggregate them. To start this I have created a blog which will have categories for the states and territories of Australia. Someone who is only interested in one region can visit the category for that region. Then recruiting agencies and companies which regularly hire Linux people can start their own RSS feeds to be syndicated in a planet instance for each state and territory. This gives a faster and more efficient response (adverts will appear quickly, can be changed or removed at any time, and less effort for moderation. I expect that recruiting agencies will occasionally post off-topic entries – but when their feed gets removed from the Planet installation they will probably make a commitment to do the right thing in future.

Planet installations can syndicate other Planet installations, so we can easily have a Linux jobs Planet for Australia (possibly run by Linux Australia) that syndicates the feeds from each state and territory.

In the long term I think that the best way of running this is to have Linux Australia run the central Planet instance and a LUG in each region run the local site. I started running it myself because I didn’t get a positive response when suggesting it to the relevant people in Linux Australia and LUV. That didn’t deter me, so I decided to set it up myself. If the idea takes off and if Linux Australia and the LUGs want to take it over I’ll be happy to use HTTP redirects to send the traffic to them – and help them with the sys-admin work if asked.

Also there is nothing specific to Australia in this idea. I am only interested in Australia because if I was to attempt to do it in a larger area (such as the EU) then I could spend all my time on it without gaining a critical mass in any region.

If you are interested in running this in your region then you need to set up a blog (for adverts that are sent to you via email) and a Planet installation that feeds from your blog and any other Linux job advert blogs in your region. If your country doesn’t already have a central Planet for jobs then creating a separate Planet installation for your country would be a good idea too. I will be happy to run a Planet installation for world-wide Linux job adverts (at least until I can convince an organization such as Linux International to run it) if this idea takes off in other countries.

Some people have asked what the benefit of a Planet is over a mailing list. You have to subscribe to a mailing list while with a Planet you can immediately visit it if you suddenly decide to find a new job. Subscribing to mailing lists for jobs from all countries would never work, but visiting a Planet for Linux jobs world-wide and then visiting a sub-planet for regional jobs would be quick and easy.