[Imc-web] Website Issues

[Mike Lehman]

I have come across three concerns in the last week that I believe should
be addressed on IMC Web list list, with some overlap on the Tech list.

The first is probably something simple, but it is a little mystifying
and irritating. I posted a comment to this feature:
<http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/7874/index.php>
I would like to edit my comment a little, but I can't find out how to do
so. Logged in as myself, the comment doesn't appear in the list of items
I've posted and can edit myself without editor privileges.

Logged in as an editor, I get an error message that says, "Unknown ID
Error Database failed to return a unique record for this query, or you
are not authorized to access that record." Maybe it's a matter of this
being a admin permissions issue, but I do think that editors should be
able to at least have the option to hide a comment posted to a Feature
that violates IMC editorial policy and I think that the author (myself,
in this case) should be able to edit their own comments in Features.

The next thing is the issue of what should be links in the feature
itself (the same feature at the link above), which I was the original
author of. For some reason, I could not get them to post as hyperlinks,
no matter how I tried, when I posted it. Maybe it's because there are so
many. It would have been a much better feature if people could've just
clicked on them, instead of having to cut-and-paste then into their
browser to be able to go to them. Anyone have an idea on why they aren't
hyperlinks? Can they be fixed? Is there another way to do this?

Finally, an issue that is part of what will be a larger problem as the
website gets more use and which holds the potential for contention
unless we adopt a policy on it. That is the posting of news and
announcements as features in general. I know that Danielle and others
are working on redoing the Community Calendar so that it is more usable
and this may help deal with some of the issues with announcements.

Right now, we seem to be getting into a pattern of posting a lot of
announcements to the Feature section. I am not necessarily opposed to
that and have, in fact, done some of this myself. I posted this
announcement of the upcoming Saturday peace demo on Thursday, two days
before it was scheduled to happen:
<http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/7913/index.php>
This is an event that is very important because of the vote for war in
Congress this week and the fact that it has widespread interest in the
community.

The following is NOT meant as a criticism of Arun's announcement of the
upcoming film, posted as:
<http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/7922/index.php>
But this event was posted as a Feature when it was ten days off. By the
time of the event, the announcement will be far down in the Feature
section and I really don't think we should move it back to the top when
its already had all that exposure. In my mind, it would have more
properly been posted on the Local Newswire, where it would have also
moved down over the course of the next week or so, and then it could
have been moved up to the Feature section a couple of days before the
event, where it would be at the top of the Feature section when it would
have done the most good at reminding people it was coming up.

I will be moving the following announcement to Features after I post
this to the list:
<http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/7924/index.php>
since it is now just two days before it occurs and, once again, it has
wide interest in the community. Failing to do so might be perceived to
be favoritism as long as we are running some announcements in Features.

I believe that we need to look at the options on this issue and come up
with some agreed upon guidelines, while perhaps giving Danielle some
input on how we ought to deal with announcements in general, so that we
can give equal consideration to all announcements, since I don't think
we really want the Features to become an announcement column. I think we
will also need to do this for what news gets posted as Features also,
since there can also be the same tendency to move a lot of Local
Newswire stuff to Features if we don't come up with guidelines for that
also.

Paul Riismandel did a great job with Features when we were on the old
software, but this was much more infrequent and laborious, which in
itself helped to prioritize what went into Features. Now that the new
software is up, there is a wider, but still small, group of people with
the ability to make Features. So far, this has been an uncoordinated
process with no agreed on procedures for what becomes a Feature,
bringing up some of the issues I have delineated above. This list can be
the beginning of a more organized approach to doing Features and I would
like the thoughts of others about how a more systematic approach to
Features can take place so that we can better and more fairly serve our
community.

Mike Lehman