Sunday, December 13, 2009
new blinks
Today, I added a variety of nodes because I wanted to see what problems I might encounter. I added Somerville Public Library, Senator Kerry, MASSPIRG student chapters, and Charlestown High School, and learned a couple things. The mechanics of the website worked well for me, but I found that the tags weren't cutting it for me. Unfortunately, although topics like homelessness work well for organizations like MASSPIRG when trying to tag individuals like Senator Kerry it can be kind of tough. A tag for politics or political figures might be helpful. Also, I came across an ethical dilemma while creating the nodes. For some of them, I just copied and pasted information off their websites. I can't decide whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. Ideally, it would be best if all the nodes created were done by the individual/organizations who they are about, but realistically, if we want the site to grow this would be hard. Consequently, it seems likely the description these organizations wouldn't mind being posted without their consent is what they already have posted up on their websites, so I decided to just copy and paste some of their mission statements. However, after I did this I began to have some doubts about totally taking their words. This also prompted me to think about more questions about consent. As a result, I am posing the following questions to the group, in regards to not only my new nodes but also the future nodes that will inevitably end up on blink. How much information is it OK to post about an organization without their consent? Is it OK to use other websites material? I don't think there is a clear answer to either of these two questions so I would love to get everyone's opinion.
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I definitely understand where Emily is coming from. I also just added two new blinks without having talked to someone from either organization. I did consider contacting both organizations, but decided against introducing them to the site before it is completely up and running. So I ended up doing what Emily did - taking all of the information from their websites. I, personally, don't see a huge problem with doing that. Whatever information they put on the website is meant for the public to see. All we're doing is allowing the public to access that same information from a different area. We might want to refrain from copying and pasting directly, however, just to be safe.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note - the two blinks I just added were for Boston Cares and Boston University's Community Service Center. Both are organizations which organize a variety of volunteer service projects. Boston Cares has a bit of a broader volunteer base, as CSC is limited mostly to the BU community, but both are still great organizations to have access too, as they are pretty large scale, and have both probably worked with a number of other organizations and already have established relationships with them.
I had posted a link a while back that shows how another website gets consent from companies for the pages that are posted to their site, but that site relies upon the companies finding themselves before others do.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if perhaps we should have an automated email that gets sent to the contact information that people post along with the node that notifies them that a node was created for the organization. While normally I would advise against automated emails, I think that we could potentially create a basic email that covers all of our information, without sounding like a robot generated it. Simply explaining that the node was created, our mission statement, and our affiliation with the university might be enough. We could include a link to the page and instructions for how to edit their node.
Although, this relies upon the person who creates the node providing an accurate email address for the organization.