Talossa Portal Open

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

As my term as Minister of STUFF is soon coming to a close, I've decided to open the doors to the Portal while there is still time to attract potential volunteers. Call it a public Alpha release, if you will. There is substantial content, but also some areas yet to be started.

While I regret not having a finished project to deliver to you, this represents what I am able to do in my spare time, as the father of three young, active children.  My efforts to engage the public have not been as successful as I'd hoped.  With the exception of two short pages created by a volunteer, there hasn't been much significant input from Talossans on this project. I don't equate this with lack of interest or a lack of agreement that this is a valuable task. Rather, you are all busy too, and there are absolute limits on what is possible when only a fraction of our lives can be spent here.

I hope that the opportunity to interact with the content will spur some additional contributions.  In the meantime, I will continue to pledge as much of my spare time as possible to bring the Portal closer to Beta state.

Should you wish to have an account with editing privileges, please write me. I will need a valid email address from you.

talossa.com/

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

It looks pretty good I like the design a lot.

I'd love an account. I'll PM you my email address, just in case you don't have it.

The news sidebar presents a bit of a problem. There's only one active blog right now, which means that it's essentially just a list of ETT articles, making it look like the country endorses the publication for which you're also the webmaster. I assume (hope, anyway) that the RSS feed also include the only active newspaper, Beric'ht, too? But that means that when an issue of that publication gets archived, all twelve or thirteen of its articles will suddenly swamp the same RSS feed list... making it look like the country is endorsing that one, instead! Might I suggest just linking to the relevant sites, instead? I don't think it's a big deal, or anything, but it's discomfiting to see the national website offering nothing but ETT stories.

[Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă]

The site looks great!

[Lüc da Schir]

Stunning, absolutely marvellous website.

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

Mar 13, 2015 5:47:49 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

The news sidebar presents a bit of a problem.

I understand, though the problem for me is that I envisioned that space as a snapshot of current happenings, not a link list for news outlets. To be fair, the "list" would have to contain more entries than it reasonably should and point people toward news outlets that report sporadically. That also presents a bit of a problem.

I've tried to make it current and fair, but it's up to the media to help.

If you'll hover over the content title ("NEWS"), you'll see that it pulls a feed from the Talossan Media Aggregator, which itself is pulling content from every current and past publication to have used RSS, including BT.

BT is actually the only publication to use a 'mass dump' for e-content delivery; ETT and the other less-active blogs post as they go.  So, it may be that one publication has a lot of links up because it is particularly active. I don't think that constitutes an endorsement, nor should those news outlets be punished for their activity. Quite the opposite.

All that to say... when a new Minister is appointed to replace me, they're absolutely free to rearrange everything as they like: design, layout, content boxes.  I'm pretty happy with the skeleton and vital organs under the visible skin.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Great work!

Maybe it would be wise for the witt admins to sticky this thread?

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Mar 13, 2015 10:36:21 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

I understand, though the problem for me is that I envisioned that space as a snapshot of current happenings, not a link list for news outlets.

One option is to use that spot for an official government newsfeed that has announcements of official actions and other objective/factual information. So you don't have someone clicking on a link on the front page of Talossa.com and going straight to a Glodaral or Elo Cutor political cartoon.

If the newsfeed IS to link to private media sources, at a minimum I think they should be identified as such. In fact, I think this should be a general practice throughout the site: have something like "(EXTERNAL LINK)" whenever a hyperlink will take you off the official state website to some other site. This is commonly done with state/government sites in other countries to avoid confusion about whether information is "official" and concerns about apparent endorsement of private websites. Most U.S. government sites even use splash pages where before being forwarded to the external site you have to click a button to acknowledge that the link you've chosen goes to an external site not endorsed by the government, but I don't think we need to go that far.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Mar 13, 2015 10:36:21 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

Mar 13, 2015 5:47:49 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

The news sidebar presents a bit of a problem.

I understand, though the problem for me is that I envisioned that space as a snapshot of current happenings, not a link list for news outlets. To be fair, the "list" would have to contain more entries than it reasonably should and point people toward news outlets that report sporadically. That also presents a bit of a problem.

Clear guidelines would be easy to establish. For example, requiring that a news organization submit themselves to be listed, and that they are subject to removal after three months of inactivity. That would make way more sense, I think, than setting up a system that - inadvertently, I'm sure - currently links exclusively to your own organization.

Mar 13, 2015 10:36:21 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

I've tried to make it current and fair, but it's up to the media to help.

...

BT is actually the only publication to use a 'mass dump' for e-content delivery; ETT and the other less-active blogs post as they go.  So, it may be that one publication has a lot of links up because it is particularly active. I don't think that constitutes an endorsement, nor should those news outlets be punished for their activity. Quite the opposite.

I'm sure you did try to make it current and fair, and I'm just giving you some feedback about how you can improve it Right now, you have accidentally set up a system that seems to favor blogs, which doesn't seem very fair to periodicals. I know you didn't intend to set it up this way, and probably just wanted to feature your personal (and excellent) aggregator on the national website, but I think there's room for improvement to make it favor ETT (and twice a month, BT) so heavily. Let's even it out, and just link to all active media groups - no question of fairness, there!

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

Listing the ETT or BT websites on the front page of the Portal provides little benefit to the reader, and nothing to the Kingdom. No interesting headline, just a free plug for some news organization -- a company which may charge for advertising, and collect personal information, or in the very least, just lead people away from the Portal itself.

In lieu of providing actual content by way of an anonymous headline, if a news organization would like to pay the Kingdom for the exposure of appearing on the Portal, I (or a future Minister) would welcome a conversation on this. We'd be happy to list your name and site URL, directing traffic to your site for a reasonable fee.

The choice of the TMA as a feed source is entirely due to the lack of a compelling alternative. It neither profits from subscribers nor content providers in bundling information in a convenient package. It doesn't advertise or track site visitors. It doesn't request personal information nor embargo content for those who decline to provide it. It's about as free as free gets.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

One problem with use of the TMA (apart, and probably exacerbating, the concerns about attribution and appearance of endorsement I mentioned above) is that the TMA itself doesn't provide any clear indication of where its articles come from. If you click on a news link from talossa.com it takes you to an article at talossa.ca/media and there's no indication in the linked article of the original source. The article's author is named, but clicking on the name doesn't tell you what publication the author is affiliated with, just what other articles (on talossa.ca/media) were written by that author.

To the extent other publications are referenced, the TMA actively confuses the reader, because the only articles tagged with "Beric'ht" are ones that are not from Beric'ht Talossan (they're from the ETT). Presumably if Mildew or someone produced cartoons alluding to ETT, the only articles tagged with "ETT" on the TMA (and which an unaware reader might suspect to be ETT articles) would actually be ones critical of the ETT.

I think that if the TMA is used on the official portal, at a minimum it should 1) be identified as an unofficial source, and 2) identify the original source of the articles at least on the linked TMA page.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Mar 13, 2015 12:10:11 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

Listing the ETT or BT websites on the front page of the Portal provides little benefit to the reader, and nothing to the Kingdom. No interesting headline, just a free plug for some news organization -- a company which may charge for advertising, and collect personal information, or in the very least, just lead people away from the Portal itself.

This seems confused to me... if you're not interested in giving media organizations free plugs and directing them away from the Portal, then why are you linking to their stories? I thought the whole point was to showcase the living world of Talossan media. That seems great to me, but it shouldn't take a form that favors one particular organization.

It's fine with me if you want to promote no one. It just doesn't seem fair to set up a system that disproportionately promotes continuously-published blogs, especially when you happen to be webmaster for the dominant one.

Mar 13, 2015 12:10:11 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

In lieu of providing actual content by way of an anonymous headline, if a news organization would like to pay the Kingdom for the exposure of appearing on the Portal, I (or a future Minister) would welcome a conversation on this. We'd be happy to list your name and site URL, directing traffic to your site for a reasonable fee.

While it's an interesting prospect, really I'd just like even-handed treatment for blogs and periodicals. A continuous RSS feed favors blogs, as opposed to periodicals that print monthly or biweekly. It's fair in the sense that both blogs and periodicals get promoted by the national website in the same way, but the chosen way is going to tend to direct much more traffic to your private blog.

You suggested that the media might adapt, but it doesn't really seem fair for you to promote ETT and demand that BT change to match it if we want promotion. The Distain, Minister for the Interior, and Minister of Stuff favor their blog over a rival periodical - fine, all well and good. But it doesn't seem right for the Minister of Stuff then to set up the national website so that it will tend to point people to that blog, and to propose that I pay the Government money if I want a system that doesn't favor either media group.

Mar 13, 2015 12:10:11 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

The choice of the TMA as a feed source is entirely due to the lack of a compelling alternative. It neither profits from subscribers nor content providers in bundling information in a convenient package. It doesn't advertise or track site visitors. It doesn't request personal information nor embargo content for those who decline to provide it. It's about as free as free gets.

On the other hand, when I click on "glodoral," I am taken from the official Talossan website to a new portal titled "Talossan Media Aggregator." On that page is a cartoon with a stolen image taken from my wife's Facebook. So I am less than stoked about this new system, since while I am quite sure it was entirely inadvertent, right now and to all appearances the Kingdom of Talossa is actively sponsoring copyright violation and serious creepiness.

That's the problem with the official site hosting a feed of links to a private feed (owned by you) dominated by a private blog (where you're the webmaster and a contributor).

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

Mar 13, 2015 12:46:04 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

That's the problem with the official site hosting a feed of links to a private feed (owned by you) 

It's a shame I've developed so much useful infrastructure that I and others rely on. 

Anyway. Back to work.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Mar 13, 2015 15:37:16 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

It's a shame I've developed so much useful infrastructure that I and others rely on.

No, it's actually awesome. Seriously. But when some are done for private purposes and some are done for official purposes, it is important to keep them straight. Like we will hopefully be doing with Wittenberg very soon. Some of the same kinds of concerns were raised early on with MPF's (also totally awesome) Talossan Database System when he was not yet reinstated as SoS. That's all been straightened out now, though.

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

Mar 13, 2015 12:46:04 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

On that page is a cartoon with a stolen image taken from my wife's Facebook. So I am less than stoked about this new system, since while I am quite sure it was entirely inadvertent, right now and to all appearances the Kingdom of Talossa is actively sponsoring copyright violation and serious creepiness.

The aggregator is automated.  The software pulls the first version of a post that exists when the feed changes.

I have now manually zapped and re-pulled that post, and a different version of the picture now appears.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Mar 13, 2015 15:37:16 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

Mar 13, 2015 12:46:04 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

That's the problem with the official site hosting a feed of links to a private feed (owned by you) 

It's a shame I've developed so much useful infrastructure that I and others rely on. 

Anyway. Back to work.

It's not really a shame. I think it's pretty great that you created your aggregator site, and the new talossa.com looks good. I just don't really think it's appropriate for the Government to choose a method of media promotion that happens to drastically favor the publication for which Government ministers write.

I mean, sheesh... talossa.com links to ten ETT pages, and not to any other news organization or stories! That doesn't seem like a problem to you?

There are two active media organizations. One is a blog and one is a periodical. You are the webmaster for the blog, with the Ministry of the Interior as its owner and the Distain and Attorney-General as contributors. You, as Minister of Stuff, happen to have chosen to feature news stories on talossa.com, and the method you chose to feature them happens to lead to literally every single visible news story coming from your blog. Zero traffic will be directed towards the periodical which, as it happens, has been critical of the Government.

How can you possibly think this is okay?

There are other issues at work, too, like Cresti has noted. You have put a feed of your private site/aggregator on the national website, and it's called the "Talossan Media Aggregator." It looks really official and clean, since both are well-designed (since you did both and you're really good at it). So there is no reason for any visitor to the site not to think that your private site was an extension of the official site. You could probably fix that pretty easily; the law says that "21.1. Non-government sanctioned web sites in relation to Talossa, including social networking sites and profile names, must have clear and visible text that says the page is an UNOFFICIAL website." (Lex.21.1), which is easy enough to do.

It's appreciated that you've deleted the post I pointed out (making it the third time I've had to chase down that incredible creepiness!), but that just goes to prove my point. If I had not, once again noticed that, then the Kingdom of Talossa would be officially sanctioning your cartoon, as far as anyone could be expected to see.

The website looks great, and I hope we'll get it finished and get it into "beta" very soon. It's wonderful to be able to point to the long-awaited talossa.com now, and I tweeted a link to it ten minutes after you announced. So we don't need to be overdramatic here. I just would like it if the national website did not exclusively link to ten stories published by one media company that happens to have a lot of Government officials working on it, since it seems wildly unfair.