Bit of an epiphany: I'm tired of the WWweb. Its consistency is mind-numbingly dull, manifested as tabs like "Products", "Solutions", "Our stockholders", "Contact us", and "Log in/out" on pages of every stripe. I mean, have website designers forgotten that visitors go to websites for reasons other than to see some nifty flash and trash?
I propose that the government be constrained from expanding until it has created an all-encompassing directory of its staff and its places of business. This directory must be in the simplest of formats and must be extensible and render at the client level (via XMP or some other metadata route) as either rollover text outline format or as condensed inline text.
Why? Oh, I'd like to know that when information is distributed electronically from government data sources that all references to person or to place appear with explicit contact information. Also, part of me fears the WWW is headed for the same fate as those thousands of pamphlets folk used to hand out -- did you not think they were so much alike that you refused to even look at one, on principle?-- reensure, Dec 30 2004 WIBNI / Let's all ?-- neilp, Dec 30 2004 More like "The Government should...", which might possibly be advocacy. But this seems like a fair suggestion. The Government gets to spend our money: they at least tell us who is doing all that spending and how to get hold of them.-- DrCurry, Dec 30 2004 this seems more like "the government should keep its (our) webistes up to date, and because they're all bound to be bland, provide a standard 'directory' of their services" some (mainly local) governments are pretty good at doing this, some are bad. I don't see the idea here, other than better data management. Perhaps 'the government should adopt the use of semantic web principles' would actually yield a better result.-- neilp, Dec 30 2004 I use this site more than government sites. Quote from Scientific American ::(212) 754-0550 :: "Any law establishing a new database has to give the government a big stick." Kay Dickersin :: (401) 863-xxxx ::, director of Brown University's :: (401) 863-xxxx :: Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence-Based Healthcare :: (401) 863-xxxx ::.-- reensure, Dec 31 2004 random, halfbakery