I arrived home late last night to the city, but wanted to post quickly this morning excerpts from an email that I received from Tim Nobling, Whitewater’s Information Technology Administrator. The use of excerpts is intended solely to convey the meaning of the email, while making this post manageable to read. The email in black, my remarks in blue.
Good evening. I am the Information Technology Administrator for the City of Whitewater. I was forwarded an email with a link to your suggestions in regards to our City’s redesigned website. You offer some very good suggestions in regards to the website. Please note that I am not a web designer by trade, it just happens to fall under the responsibilities of my title (I believe it is the ever popular “other” category that is very prevalent in many job descriptions). That being said, I am encouraged with the feedback I have received from the community (good and bad) and look forward to input from everyone on making the City’s website better….I have listed your suggestions, and my responses follow.
Calendar….[where I suggested a calendar for the city website]….Meetings used to be on the first page at the bottom on the old site, and were moved to the Public Service announcements of the new one. I have received a few emails asking that they be moved back, and have done so. I have also added a quick link to the appropriate agenda next to the individual meeting (if I have had the agenda sent to me). There is no reason I cannot have the meetings for the entire month listed, so I will have to look into getting a listing of the monthly confirmed meetings. Agendas will be a bit trickier to post so far in advance as they tend to evolve quite a bit up until a week before the meeting….
Calendars are probably a matter of personal taste. While you have a nicely formatted calendar on your site, you can see that only three out of 30 days are actually linked to something currently. I know this will fill up as your calendar expands…. If you visit the Special Events page, (For Residents/Special Events) you will see a calendar of events by month beginning to populate as I receive the event ….
Disclaimers….[on the idea that disclaimers were displayed too prominently on the city’s splash page]….This has been changed (it was on the original site as a PDF as well). While I haven’t had anyone mention this specifically, this was done because of the complete site overhaul. For a visitor that was used to the look of the old site, the new site was probably so drastically different, he/she might wonder if they went to the correct site. I wanted to make sure for the first couple of weeks the disclaimer was in plain text and the Adobe Acrobat Reader was not needed to read it. It may seem like silly logic to some, but you may be surprised how many bases I need to cover when maintaining information for a government agency. Needless to say, it is indeed a nice small disclaimer once again.
Translations…. [on the suggestion of adding a translation tool to the city website]….This is something I am researching but have not had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on. It is a great idea, and one that will be acted upon (no time frame given yet). Google is a very simple solution and seems to be fairly effective. As you have stated on your site though, it is a “loose translation”. I feel it is fairly accurate, but not accurate enough to use as a tool on our website. Websites can be viewed as official documents, and I would hate to see Google translate something into an un-intended meaning. (That wouldn’t be good for anyone) I may be able to write a disclaimer about the accuracy and utilize a tool like Google or Babelfish, but I would prefer it be an accurate translation.
I appreciate your feedback on the new website, in fact I appreciate everyone’s feedback on the website. I appreciate the time you took to review the new site, and encourage others to do the same. The one thing I would ask though, (for you and for everyone) is that you email me with revisions, errors, suggestions, etc. directly. I am not saying “don’t place suggestions on your site”, but if I wasn’t forwarded the link to the suggestions, I probably wouldn’t have seen them to review them. You can always email directly at tnobling@ci.whitewater.wi.us or use the webmaster@ci.whitewater.us. Both of them come directly to me, and I try respond to website emails within 24 hours upon receipt. Customer service is a very important process and one that I take very seriously….
Just some more number facts about the website currently- There are 4,299 total links on our website (internal, external, etc.). There are 177 pages….
Regards,
Tim Nobling MCP, MCSA, Security +
Information Technology Administrator
City Of Whitewater
Adams: I appreciate your email reply to my review. Thanks for looking into my small suggestions, and the likely far better suggestions of others. As I noted in my review, the new city site is significantly more attractive than the previous one, with features that the old one never had.
I try to confine most — if not all — of my writing to this website itself, to avoid side conversations via email of which readers would be unaware. In my eyes, every post is a small, simple public message: some posts are like editorials, and some are reviews, as is true for many blogs. Your suggestion of both posting here and sending an email simultaneously for a specific suggestion is a good one, as it preserves the public nature of a blog while assuring the suggestion/message gets to the right person. (For many posts, that are commentary only, there’s no single recipient implied; the post is just a public message, like an editorial.)
The listing of the disclaimers through a single hyperlink, and the listing of events on the main page, are easier — as you write — than a formatted calendar. My calendar will probably never have more than several events each month, as I will select only what I wish to write about as the focus of the FREE WHITEWATER site. A listing works just as well, if not better, than a calendar for the city’s more exhaustive schedule.
Translations, as you note, are the hardest of all. Our city’s demographic will not fundamentally change, and we will find many of our fellow residents will need some sort of language translation. The suggestion is easier than the effort, but as you mention, the effort is a worthy one.
Again, thanks for your comments, and reply.
Adams