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At 09:46 AM 7/21/98 -0400, you wrote:
> I'm reluctant to
>trust web novices who want to catch the wave (or who genuinely want to
>share information as widely as possible) but have little experience and
>unreasonable expectations about how to make it happen.

This is the point where you take their ideas and enthusiasm and channel it,
bringing them into project meetings with other veteran staff members who
can help solidify this 
"young whippersnapper's" idea.

>Besides avoiding the potential conflict-of-interest perception, I'd be
>worried about adopting pages which may not be properly updated and which
>reflect badly on the site itself.

This would be the responsibility of a project manager in charge of this
section. City Clerks often have this information upto-date. It's a matter
of training them to e-mail/fax it to you once a month. Having a checklist
of cities and towns helps and after the information is received, cross them
off the monthly list. After their latest info is entered into the Web
site's database, update the list again stating such. 

>Casual visitors to a site may have difficulty distinguishing original
>editorial content from city/town postings which could end up being
>outdated, unedited, etc. and blame us for errors that are beyond our control.
>How do we make the information available while keeping the distinction
>explicit?

It's all a matter of wording. Perhaps if you have the town seal and even
make the site look like it's from the town rather than MassLive, (maybe
even listing someone from the town office as a contact), the distinction
should be easily made. If you want to take it a step further, slap a
disclaimer on the botom of the page.

There are too many companies that would rather not print information than
go through the trouble of making sure it's current and valid. There is
great opportunity for anyone who has the patience and is willing to spend
the money. Using Massachusetts as an example, there are currently only 5
towns that have the URL of http://www.ci.masstown.ma.us with "masstown"
being the town's name. All others are created by residents or companies out
to make a buck.

The real money is to be made when a town becomes fully on-line allowing for
residents to find out information on permits, the local chamber of
commerce, paying parking tickets and other local fines, paying local taxes
and downloading local tax information. Doing something like this requires a
great amount of patience, (as does anyone contracted to an organization
from the public sector), but in the end, it will make everyone's lives easier.

If you want a good example of a site that's slowly making information
available to the public and allowing them to pay certain fines/fees
on-line, I suggest the City of Boston Web site: http://www.ci.boston.ma.us
--
B.K. DeLong               360 Huntington Ave.
Editor-in-Chief             Suite 140SC-305
Association News       Boston, MA 02115
World Organization      (617) 247-3753
of Webmasters 


http://www.world-webmasters.org/newsletter/
bkdelong@naw.org

The World Organization of Webmasters is 
the parent organization of the National 
Association of Webmasters.

http://www.naw.org

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