Maintenance is so booooooooooring

[Dianna Roberts]

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From: jmk at synopsys.com
Date: 13 Aug 97
Subject: Re: Maintenance is so booooooooooring
Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>

> 
> What are other libraries doing about web maintenance?  Is the person who 
> created the page originally responsible for maintaining it, or does that 
> responsibility fall on someone else?  Do you do anything about abandoned 
> pages? 
> 

Andrea,

I work for a corporate, but I believe any site experiences these
problems where multiple people are responsible for content.

We've done two things to ensure this doesn't happen.

1. All pages must contain a point of contact listing the person responsible
for the page, as has been discussed here alot. No one gets linked
to our main intranet page unless this is present.

2. We have a representative from each department who is a "department
webmaster". Part of their job description is to keep their folks
on their toes about refreshing content. We support them by using
utilities such as MOMSpider to weekly generate a list of pages
that have not been touched in over 90 days, and they follow up
with those people.

The key is, of course, that these steps don't work either unless you've
convinced your organization as a whole that keeping their content up to
date is a good idea. If they buy into that on a theoretical level, then
we have people who are there to push them to fulfill it on a practical
level. Those people, if they don't perform, are pushed by their
managers, who all signed a paper in the beginning that said "Web is
good, we will support". In a company of our size (~3,000 employees),
spreading the responsibility for maintenance was essential for us.

There are more and more site maintenance tools popping up as well, that
can help you spot broken links or change references when a page moves.
Adobe SiteMill comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.

-Janet

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This is exactly the reason why our company's Quality Assurance Manager wants each web page to be treated as a document with a file number instead of a name, a move which we are resisting because of the bureaucracy involved in assigning numbers and maintaining a file list, plus the effect it could have on stifling contributors' enthusiasm and creativity.

Regards,
Dianna Roberts

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Dianna Roberts, Manager TeLIS Operations (dianna.roberts at opus.co.nz)
Opus International Consultants
P O Box 12004, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
Ph. 0064-4-4717250     Fax. 0064-4-4731075
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