> > At 01:16 AM 15-01-2018, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > > > Again, not a good reason. The old site had no obvious problem, there > > > was no compelling reason to change. If "it was done by volunteers, > > > work or shup up" is the rule, I will start to submit random patches to > > > the Linux kernel and reply to all criticisms by "I'm a volunteer, shut > > > up". > > The text which you quoted might be the rule for the work done by some > > "groups". If a person is doing some work for free and does not derive any > > direct or indirect benefit from that work, how would that person react if > > he/she received a flood of extremely unpleasant comments? That does not mean > > that there cannot be any criticism. 50+ years ot experience with volunteer organizations says that what people want most is fair treatment. Good work needs to be rewarded and bad work needs to be called out, kindly but firmly, for being bad. The usual problem in volunteer organizations is making sure that good work is rewarded. It's all too easy to get into the habit of taking someone who quietly does something important with no muss and no fuss for granted. But failing to call out, or worse, rewarding, bad work, is incredibly corrosive. It's not the effect on the people who did that work that's at issue - although it's not good - it's the effect on everyone else. > > The design brief from Torchbox Ltd states that "The site's aesthetic will > > draw inspiration from" www.gov.uk. In my opinion, the new website does not > > come even close to that. Agreed. www.gov.uk is a clean and well designed task-oriented site - someone clearly put some real thought into what likely visitors were going to want to do, and then came up with some sensible groupings to make the various workflows easy to find. But it's hardly unique. The California Department of Motor Vehicle's site, www.dmv.ca, does something comparable, and speaking from personal experience, is very easy to use for a variety of tasks. > I clicked on a few links and I got a few 404s. I can think of a few ways to > try and avoid such an issue before a site goes into production. > It would be nice if it did look like www.gov.uk; lots of easy to see and read > links readily available without scrolling. Exactly. > The gov.uk site is underpinned by some great work on open data. Indeed. Figuring out the right top-level entries and groupings for a range of target demographics can be challenging. But it's totally doable, and more to the point, nothing about the design of the IETF site would appear to present comparable difficulty. Ned