A work in progress
Here’s another one from the mailbag deserving of a separate post:
“….This doesn’t feel like a social networking site either. It just has that “governmental” feel. Everything seems too non-spontaneous (comments need to be approved before passing through, we can’t actually post blogs and whatnot unless we forward them through the site admins which, ironically, is really bad for privacy)
Posting on this site feels like more work than it should be… it’s not fun (the base of the problem). I sure don’t like feeling like a social experiment, yet I offer up these comments in hopes that you’ll read them, listen to them, and make changes so this website is appealing to youth.”
We’ve heard from you: this site needs to be more responsive and more entertaining. You’d like to see more interactive stuff like quizzes and videos and games – and we’re figuring out what we can get done.
You also want to see your comments be posted more quickly, and want to be able to post blog entries directly to the blog.
Unfortunately, there will be a delay when you want to post a comment on this blog, and we do have to review your posts before they make it to the blog page.
Can you give us a little bit of a break? Youthprivacy.ca is, after all, a government web site trying to do something unusual. Look around. Are there other government web sites that want you to write things for them – and will publish them?
We genuinely want to encourage conversation on this blog, but we have to ensure that we don’t publish things that are offensive, rude or abusive.
Honestly, we approve comments as quickly as possible.
As for blog posts, we’re still trying to figure out how best to manage this. We want you to write your own posts but, just as we do in the office, they will have to be reviewed by staff before they go live as well.
If others of you have ideas for this blog, or if you’d like to blog for us, we’re listening.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Ah but despite me understanding the predicament at hand and knowing that this is new and the government is new to all social networking things (making these suggestions up to you is not meant to be insulting and I’m sorry if it appears as such, I truly do feel like it is important for the government to keep this project up), it is my honest opinion that this site was launched far too early. Before launch there should have been more feedback as to how you could improve the site, it’s contents and it’s layout.
First impressions are everything, if a site isn’t fun at first impression, it should either be made fun asap or people just won’t bother to visit it for a long time.
also unusual is a term used for something not common and, whilst it’s uncommon to have a government hosted blog site, it is not uncommon to have a blog site.
So let us be honest here:
Even though it is uncommon for a government to create a site like this, does the fact that the government is hosting the site make it any more appealing than a site such as livejournal? What people look for is the fastest, funnest, most convenient and most efficient way to spend their time blogging or whatever. If a site doesn’t deliver or only has some of those traits, people end up migrating to other sites.
Kudos to the government for trying something new though, I strongly agree with your sentiments about new technology. Just try to keep up.
If you need something that you think is in my power, don’t hesitate to ask either. If you want suggestions as to what my simple mind may hold, the site admins have an email of mine (that gets submitted with every reply heh).
June 18th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Also care to write a guide on how to submit blogs?
I had a couple good ideas, however there is no email link anywhere on the blog pages that I can find. So it would be much appreciated to give more detail on the how.