Talossa Portal Open

[Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă]

Mar 13, 2015 16:01:46 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

You are the webmaster for the blog, with the Ministry of the Interior as its owner and the Distain and Attorney-General as contributors.  

I don't think it is true ETT is owned by The Ministry of the Interior. I think it just happens to be owned by the person who happens to BE the Minister of the Interior.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Yes, that's what I meant. The current Minister of Stuff is the webmaster, the current Minister of the Interior is the owner, and the current Distain and Attorney-General are contributors. The offices themselves aren't involved, but only the current office-holders.

I'm not saying that ETT is a tool of the Government or that the Government is intentionally working to promote a rival staffed by Government officials over one that has been critical of the Government, let me be clear. I'm just saying that, almost certainly inadvertently, the system the Government has set up is ignoring the long-running periodical that has been critical of the Government. I'm sure it was just an accident, but it looks really bad and it's probably something we want to tweak on the site.

Hopefully the MinStuff won't insist that the only way he's going to put news stories on the site is by putting up the feed to his personal aggregator site. I can think of several alternatives.

1) I already suggested publishing links to the sites, with clear guidelines as to what qualifies as a media site for inclusion. I suggested being active within the most recent 3 months, but we could make it 6.

2) The take-my-ball-and-go-home approach might be to just eliminate the entire sidebar, although that wouldn't show off the flourishing Talossan media sector.

3) Putting up mini-feeds from several different sites on their own subpage might be a way to go - the portal approach. The same clear guidelines can be issued for which sites could qualify.

4) Select curated content, specifically chosen by the MinStuff as being nonpartisan, to be highlighted. The recent interview with Sir Iusti or the mourning post on ETT, for example, or Ian Tamoran's epics and Sir Cresti's GMiPTH in BT.

There's basically a ton of ways we can do this without having the official Talossan website featuring ten ETT links exclusively.

[Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă]

Mar 13, 2015 16:22:55 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

Yes, that's what I meant. The current Minister of Stuff is the webmaster, the current Minister of the Interior is the owner, and the current Distain and Attorney-General are contributors. The offices themselves aren't involved, but only the current office-holders.

I'm not saying that ETT is a tool of the Government or that the Government is intentionally working to promote a rival staffed by Government officials over one that has been critical of the Government, let me be clear. I'm just saying that, almost certainly inadvertently, the system the Government has set up is ignoring the long-running periodical that has been critical of the Government. I'm sure it was just an accident, but it looks really bad and it's probably something we want to tweak on the site.

Hopefully the MinStuff won't insist that the only way he's going to put news stories on the site is by putting up the feed to his personal aggregator site.

I can speak for the government when I say the government itself didn't make any such policy. However, I think it is admirable what the MinStuff has attempted and concerns are likely to rise in any new venture. I'm sure this will get resolved amicably.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Mar 13, 2015 16:27:25 GMT -6 Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă said:

Mar 13, 2015 16:22:55 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

Yes, that's what I meant. The current Minister of Stuff is the webmaster, the current Minister of the Interior is the owner, and the current Distain and Attorney-General are contributors. The offices themselves aren't involved, but only the current office-holders.

I'm not saying that ETT is a tool of the Government or that the Government is intentionally working to promote a rival staffed by Government officials over one that has been critical of the Government, let me be clear. I'm just saying that, almost certainly inadvertently, the system the Government has set up is ignoring the long-running periodical that has been critical of the Government. I'm sure it was just an accident, but it looks really bad and it's probably something we want to tweak on the site.

Hopefully the MinStuff won't insist that the only way he's going to put news stories on the site is by putting up the feed to his personal aggregator site.

I can speak for the government when I say the government itself didn't make any such policy. However, I think it is admirable what the MinStuff has attempted and concerns are likely to rise in any new venture. I'm sure this will get resolved amicably.

I hope it will be resolved amicably, too I edited my post in a dastardly way to put up some suggestions, above, about the different things that could be done. Sev is very competent and clever, though, so I imagine he probably has even more than the ones I dashed off.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Mar 13, 2015 16:22:55 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

Hopefully the MinStuff won't insist that the only way he's going to put news stories on the site is by putting up the feed to his personal aggregator site. I can think of several alternatives.

1) I already suggested publishing links to the sites, with clear guidelines as to what qualifies as a media site for inclusion. I suggested being active within the most recent 3 months, but we could make it 6.

2) The take-my-ball-and-go-home approach might be to just eliminate the entire sidebar, although that wouldn't show off the flourishing Talossan media sector.

3) Putting up mini-feeds from several different sites on their own subpage might be a way to go - the portal approach. The same clear guidelines can be issued for which sites could qualify.

4) Select curated content, specifically chosen by the MinStuff as being nonpartisan, to be highlighted. The recent interview with Sir Iusti or the mourning post on ETT, for example, or Ian Tamoran's epics and Sir Cresti's GMiPTH in BT.

Personally, I'm increasingly fond of the option I mentioned before: have an official feed for government announcements. Maybe links to private outlets separately, without providing links to specific articles or their headlines. I think it'd be just as undesirable to have a link on Talossa.com reading "Judicial Inactivity; Government Incompetence" (as will be sure to show up once BT #24 hits the BT blog) as to have a list of purely ETT articles.

A government news feed could highlight things like the start and end of Clarks, the start and end of elections, appointments and resignations from positions, the granting of honours, number of prospectives introduced to the nation in the past month, and new citizenship grants.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

That's another great option! It would require some additional work, though, to maintain - that's something they have to consider.

For a long time, I tried to do that with Noticieir, but I really let it slide these days.

[Nicholas Hayes]

I'll start by saying the new site looks amazing. I can tell a lot of hard work and graft has gone into it and all involved in the site deserve a big well done on getting the site where it is today. I look forward to seeing the fully finished and updated website soon!

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

Realistically, the "take my ball and go home" approach (#2, as described above) is the fairest, fastest offering. Curating is desirable but isn't time I possess.

[Munditenens Tresplet]

Just to add, the Talossan Media Aggregator is a creation of the Talossan Press Association, and existed before Berich't and ETT. It was developed by Sevastáin while I was the TPA Chairman, and its creation (along with other reasons) was why I handed over the reins of the TPA to him.

I support the inclusion of the Aggregator on the main portal of the Kingdom, as it does its best to fairly include all current publications that have RSS feeds. Perhaps a compromise would be to say "News, brought to you by the TPA?"

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Mar 13, 2015 18:07:55 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

Realistically, the "take my ball and go home" approach (#2, as described above) is the fairest, fastest offering. Curating is desirable but isn't time I possess.

I would volunteer to do it... maybe CCX and I could do it jointly? I bet it would be pretty easy to find a list of articles we both would agree to have on the national site, and we could update it every couple of months or so. If we both had to agree on any article for it to go up, then it wouldn't be any burden on you, and it would be perfectly fair. You wouldn't have to take your ball and go home at all! Shall I get in touch with CCX to see if he'd be on board?

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Mar 13, 2015 18:16:18 GMT -6 Munditenens Tresplet said:

I support the inclusion of the Aggregator on the main portal of the Kingdom, as it does its best to fairly include all current publications that have RSS feeds. Perhaps a compromise would be to say "News, brought to you by the TPA?"

That's more or less one of my suggestions. Next to NEWS put "(External Links)", and at the bottom of the main page have a note saying something like "links identified as external links are to sites not controlled by the Government of the Kingdom of Talossa, and no endorsement of their contents is intended." Such a disclaimer will be good for all kinds of things. Once Telecomuna is up and running, for example (if RZ22 passes), the FORUM link on the menu bar could drop down a list including "Telecomuna" and "Wittenberg (external link)".

But still, the Aggregator really should identify the source of the articles appearing on it.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Mar 13, 2015 18:21:16 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

I would volunteer to do it... maybe CCX and I could do it jointly? I bet it would be pretty easy to find a list of articles we both would agree to have on the national site, and we could update it every couple of months or so. If we both had to agree on any article for it to go up, then it wouldn't be any burden on you, and it would be perfectly fair. You wouldn't have to take your ball and go home at all! Shall I get in touch with CCX to see if he'd be on board?

And/or move Notiçeir to noticeir.talossa.com, make sure each cabinet minister and royal officer has posting access, and have them each (or a deputy) post 1-paragraph updates from time to time. The news feed could draw from that.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

I'd be happy to grab an xml backup of Noticieir for Sev to nationalize and put online again. Back in the day, I just thought it was a terrible idea to have every official pronouncement just on a Witt post somewhere, and I would love for it to be nationalized. I'll sign it away to the Government at a moment's notice.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

I say, keep the sidebar. Don't let the BT faction push you around.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Sevastáin Pinátsch, should I see if CCX is up for it?