Do progress reports/logging information belong on stderr or stdout?

Is there an official POSIX, GNU, or other guideline on where progress reports and logging information (things like "Doing foo; foo done") should be printed? Personally, I tend to write them to stderr so I can redirect stdout and get only the program's actual output. I was recently told that this is not good practice since progress reports aren't actually errors and only error messages should be printed to stderr. Both positions make sense, and of course you can choose one or the other depending on the details of what you are doing, but I would like to know if there's a commonly accepted standard for this. I haven't been able to find any specific rules in POSIX, the GNU coding standards, or any other such widely accepted lists of best practices. We have a few similar questions, but they don't address this exact issue: * https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/79315/22222 : The accepted answer suggests what I tend to do, keep the program's final output on stdout and anything else to stderr. However, this is just presented as a user's opinion, albeit supported by arguments. * https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/8813/22222 : This is specific to help messages but cites the GNU coding standard. This is the sort of thing I'm looking for, just not restricted to help messages only. So, are there any official rules on where progress reports and other informative messages (which aren't part of the program's actual output) should be printed?