Category: Internet and web

The web: whose job is it?

The latest post from Eric Hodgson of Fuzzy Content poses that nagging question about the web that we’ve all heard or asked many, many times:

Whose job is the web, anyway?

For many university staffers, the answer is, “Not mine.”

Writes Hodgson: “In helping colleges understand how a Web site should be managed day-in and day-out, I am sometimes surprised at how closely Web content is held by a select few. It is also surprising how many departments want nothing to do with keeping their site up to snuff for visitors.”

For those who say, “The web is not my job,” Hodgson responds:

The Web is everyone’s job, since it affects every department. If you are in the Biology department, and that site is out of date, you need to either change the content or alert the proper channels. You may not be an official “content author”, but if you find a mistake, get it fixed.

More good stuff over there.

Anonymous website: third tier or bust

This morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) reports that an anonymous website critical of Missouri Valley College‘s administration — and the school’s fourth-tier ranking in U.S. News‘ annual listing of America’s Best Colleges — “has students and professors on the Marshall, Mo., campus buzzing.”

Like several similar Web pages that have popped up in recent years, Missouri Valley College: A Different View appears to be written, pseudonymously, by a frustrated professor or administrator. The site’s author — who goes by the nom de plume “W.H. Black,” the name of Missouri Valley’s first president — lambastes the college’s president and trustees, accusing them of corruption, lack of vision, and an unhealthy obsession with the institution’s athletics program.

Unfortunately for the campus, this news breaks the same day as the college’s “first-ever Senior Day Employment Symposium” (according to a PDF newsletter from MVC president Bonnie L. Humphrey). Funny how these things seem to happen at the worst of times.