On Thu, 1 Nov 2001 [log in to unmask] wrote:

|  > | I wonder if you should not talk to people like the BBC to see how they
|  > | do it?

|  > They have 100 times the resources any of us have, I suspect.
|
| Yes, but that is an important fact, if its true.


It's definitely true that they have a LOT more resources than any of
us.  Surely you don't think that the entire BBC site is maintained by one
or two web editors, as the majority of University sites are? :-)

| Any of you facing
| this problem needs to have firm evidence to present to your paymasters
| about the level of resources needed to maintain a comprehensively
| branded set of interlinked web sites.

Yes, this will help you.  But it could also, potentially, make the thing
seem so massive it can't possibly be done.  Whether you want this to come
across or not is up to you...

| My feeling is that it comes down to political will. As you demonstrate
| from Nottingham, the individual faculties are beyond this level of
| control, and the centre is probably too weak and unwilling to take
| them on. And if thats true of Nottingham, imagine the problem in a
| place like Oxford, where the colleges are _legally_ not under under
| the control of a central admin....

Indeed.

| Perhaps you could explain further, in relation to my sticks and
| carrots business, how you tried to influence them at Nottingham?

Ok, I'll try.

Information:  There are so many web sites, with new ones being created all
the time, that it's difficult to identify them.  We started (actually,
this was before my time) with all the Schools, Institutes and Departments.

This is a LOT of people - far, far, too many to get into one
meeting.  We have a Web Steering group, made up of some of the significant
players, and we have a Web Coordinators mailing list, made up
(theoretically) of all the people that edit web sites across the
University.  It has something like 125 members, which should give you some
idea of the scale of the job.

Reins: The way we check is just by looking, but there's little we can do
to force people to change by ourselves.

Carrots: We have generic, corporate templates people can (should) use.  We
will do different designs for specific cases.  We maintain central style
sheets, so that people aren't (shouldn't be) using any kind of text
formatting etc.  We also re-work our designs on a regular basis, e.g.
new school welcome pages: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/physics/  Training
is available, but that's not handled by us.  We have guidelines on the web
that people can refer to.

Sticks: We do have authority behind us, but, thing is, most people just
don't have the time to fight for our cause.  It's a lot easier to just let
people keep the web site they have than to argue about it.  Apathy is your
greatest enemy.

Kat