On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, K Fearon wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Rick Hobson wrote:
>
> > the idea of them thinking "Oh, whilst I'm here I'll just make an
> > inquiry about a degree course" is pretty laughable). When people arrive
> > at a department site what they want is information which is easy to find,
> > up to date and quick to download. They do not come to marvel at the
> > wonders of the institutions corporate identity.
>
> But it is perfectly possible for people to follow links from other sites
> or search engines to pages buried deep in departmental web areas, and to
> have no clear idea of which institution they belong to or where they are
> (domain names like bbk.ac.uk or ysj.ac.uk won't necessarily tell you much
> if you're not already familiar with UK HE institutions). I've done that a
> number of times while searching for information.
If you've come to a point deep within the information tree one assumes you
are looking for something very specific. If you are really interested in
where the information is coming from and this isn't clear from the page it
isn't particularly difficult to navigate to the home page.
> Part of the point of using corporate ID is to validate information to give
> users some idea of its status. At York, users aren't allowed to put the
> corporate ID on their personal web space. It's only to be used on pages
> where the University has some control over the content and in the case of
> departments, where they have responsibility for ensuring that the content
> accurately reflects what they are trying to do.
Providing that rules regarding publisher of information are adhered to I
see no problem. A corporate ID in no way validates information. The
information I publish as a "registered" information provider isn't made
more or less valid by the presence or absence of a corporate ID.
> The reverse of that is that lack of the corporate ID or the information
> being used off the main York server is not something we can guarantee is
> accurate - and hopefully offers some measure of protection when it comes
> to legal liability.
>
> Kriss
>
--
Rick
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Dr. Rick Hobson Tel: +44-(0)118 931-6375
<[log in to unmask]> Fax: +44-(0)118 931-6331
Chemistry Dept.
University of Reading Blame
RG6 6AD, UK Somebody
http://www.chem.rdg.ac.uk Else
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