|
Al,
I'm always interested in getting as much info as possible before making a
decision. Thanks for your response. Note: I'm copying DeDe with this message
so she's aware we had this conversation.
1) I agree the National web page is not perfect, but in my opinion, only the
<noframes> error is significant at this point given the 2002 AG only ended a
few days ago. I assume the meta data will be updated within a reasonable
time frame. I completely trust our National webmaster on those issues.
2) I wasn't as concerned about technical plagiarism as I was about
"responsible" communication. Yes I understand Bill's comments - I was at the
heart of that issue. I assume you might be a little put off if, without your
knowledge, Jason had copied all your content onto his site, making
appropriate modifications.
3) I took a look at your modifications. There are a few formatting items -
paragraph breaks, etc, and some additional links, but the biggies seem to be
a) meta content, including various web ratings, b) the image map including
Mensa Canada (nice touch), and c) the copyright footer you have on the rest
of the MN Mensa site. In my opinion (I have a lot of these), Jason would
have included much of the meta and copyright items if Judy had directed him
to borrow from your site - which she did not.
But there is one modification I think you should IMMEDIATELY remove. I see
you added an MS Word version of the registration form. I don't believe Jane
would want this (I have not contacted her and could be wrong), and besides
this goes beyond web design (your job) and into content (contributor's job).
Finally, because there is indeed a brouhaha at this point, I respectfully
suggest that you to make a concession, until the board takes some action -
which we will very soon. Would you please consider changing the 2003 AG link
on the MN Mensa Home Page to redirect to Jason's www.ag2003.com site? I feel
this single action would go a long way to smoothing things for the moment -
the water is VERY hot right now Al.
Regards,
Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: Al Heigl [mailto:alheigl@rconnect.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 1:08 PM
To: Rowan, Jeff
Subject: Re: Web Site - AG 2003
Hi, Jeff, thanks for writing. It means a lot to hear from you on this.
"Rowan, Jeff" wrote:
>
---------------------------------
> JEFF'S COMMENT:
>
> Al, both Mind Games and the Annual Gathering are American Mensa (National)
> events - official activities of American Mensa. Minnesota just plays party
> host. The web sites are not necessarily affiliated with the local host
> group. To be frank, if I would have had more time with Mind Games
planning,
> I may have requested a unique (non-MNMensa) site
as well.
It's an interesting idea -- the AG itself is an American Mensa event,
while the *hosting* of the AG is a Minnesota Mensa event.
Actually, this very concept is how this whole brouhaha started -- I
wrote to National merely asking, essentially, whether we were expected
to submit material for them to put at
http://ag.us.mensa.org/ or whether
they would use the home page there to link to the material on our
website.
Clearly, MN Mensa is in the position to develop the content, so my
question was, where would they like the content to go. (AG2002 had a
full set of pages on National, I believe.)
It would also appear that American Mensa has seen no need for separate
websites for AGs.
OH, and by the way, since I just looked, here's the actual html content
of the home page at
http://ag.us.mensa.org/ as of this moment:
<html>
<head>
<title>American Mensa Annual Gathering 2002</title>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="Home page f0r the American Mensa Annual Gathing 2002,
hosted by Greater Phoenix Mensa" name=DESCRIPTION>
<META content="Home page f0r the American Mensa Annual Gathing 2002,
hosted by Greater Phoenix Mensa" name=ABSTRACT>
<META content="June 28, 2001" name=LASTUPDATE>
<META
content="Mensa, Greater Phoenix Mensa, Gathering, Annual Gathering,
homepage,home page" name=KEYWORDS>
<META content=Public name=SECURITY>
<META content=index,follow name=ROBOTS>
</head>
<frameset rows="*" frameborder="NO" border="0" framespacing="0"
cols="*">
<frame name="mainFrame" src="http://www.ag2003.com">
</frameset>
<noframes><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
</body></noframes>
</html>
Still says Phoenix, still says 2002, misspells "Gathering" -- not to
mention that the </noframes> is misplaced outside the </body> tag, which
is probably why I get a completely blank page displayed under Netscape
4.79.
(I show you this just to illustrate how frustrating it is to bust my
butt doing my best to do a professional job for Minnesota Mensa, and
then see that others aren't even coming close. <g>)
----------------------------
> JEFF'S QUESTIONS:
> Your comments re: www.ag2003.com <http://www.ag2003.com>
and the relevant
> portion of the MN Mensa site are interesting:
>
> 1) I notice that Jason's code is copied into your site (with some slight
> modifications). Was Jason aware you did this?
No, he wasn't, nor did he ever make me aware of his pages while they
were under development. (I've also noticed some signs that he may have
copied his "originals" from the AML site, then put in his own content.)
There are a LOT more than "slight modifications" under the hood of those
pages, in the html code.
If you're wondering about the propriety of this, Bill addressed this
sort of thing obliquely in the April '02 Mensagenda -- see his section
captioned "Plagiarism?" on page 6, and in particular the paragraph
starting "Be Thee Warned!" -- I believe the same principle applies to
website-website as to Mensagenda-website-Mensagenda.
>
> 2) Could you give me the "short list" of your critique of his site? No
> midnight oil needed, just 10 minutes.
I could just type up what I've jotted on both sides of a 3x5 card, but
most things would need a sentence or two to make them understandable and
meaningful.
I'm planning to type it up (it won't be an opus) anyway for the benefit
of all. I think these issues are very important, and I hope the Board
will actually take some formal action(s) to deal with them definitively,
so I really want everybody to have access to a coherent assessment of
the issues.
Jeff, thanks again for caring enough to correspond on these things!
Regards,
Al
--
Al Heigl
Mill City Records
P.O. Box 177
Northfield Minnesota 55057-0177
507-663-6090
(Professional Proofreading,
Web Site Work using FrontPage 2002)
http://www.mnmensa.org/webmaster/ |