Clue-point-zero

[j4]

So Department X wants a complete list of all the people who link to their site because, and I quote:

We are currently looking at updating the information on our website and we want to know who and where other departments link into our website to ensure the correct information is given.

I can't wait to find out who'd have to link to them in order for them to consider it worthwhile to provide correct information. I also wonder what they're going to do about it if the wrong people are linking to them... no, wait, I know the answer to that, and it involves the words "whinging" and "in my general direction".

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

Hello, you. :-)

I'm all for giving people this information (it's the only way they'll find out how useless it really is) and building it into the CMS seems to be a good way of doing this, but we're using a fiendish home-rolled CMS system so it may not be practical at the moment. (What CMS etc are your web people using, OOI?)

The question of them doing something stupid doesn't really arise as we're still quality-controlling everything that gets published (for trusted content providers this is basically just a push-the-button formality; for others, it's a gate we can keep closed no matter how hard they headbutt it). It's all a tradeoff between getting your time wasted preventing teh stupid, and letting teh stupid happen (but saving time -- though I'd argue that then half my time would be spent retrospectively fixing stupidity).

On a bad day, though, I just think "Why don't we just turn the whole goddamned thing into a wiki, and then tell them 'when you shoot yourself in the foot, don't come running to us'."

[erikarn.livejournal.com]

Hah! The current CMS (mysource classic) doesn't even have change history; thats done by backing the thing up once and hour and hoping for the best.

At least modern wikis give that. :)

(And hi you. :)

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

"Why don't we just turn the whole goddamned thing into a wiki, and then tell them 'when you shoot yourself in the foot, don't come running to us'."

Because they will come running to you ANYWAY, and you won't be able to stop them. And then your bad day will be an even worse day, because they'll whine and whine until you've fixed their mess, or whine even more if you tell them you can't fix it.

[j4.livejournal.com]

So then we... RELEASE THE MAN-EATING BEARS!