Under the Dome makes the leap

News & Observer Editors Blog
04/22/07 at 09:54
I have already weighed in on the topic of anonymity and posting. However, speaking of faults, I am posting this here because among other things wrong with it, the comment function on the new Dome blog doesn't work.

Your web folks appear to have unveiled that blog a little prematurely. Or do you truly think the names listed in the Profiles section are appropriate? Or worse yet, does someone think they are amusing?

I suspect the following politicians highlighted there might disagree with all three of the above concepts. (It's not ready, it's not correct and it's certainly not funny.)

Speaker John Hackney
U.S. Representative George Butterfield
U.S. Representative John Coble
Candidate Johnny Edwards
U.S. Representative Robert Hayes
"H. Majority Leader" Lindsey Holliman
U.S. Representative Douglas McIntyre
U.S. Representative Ralph Miller
U.S. Representative Joseph Shuler

I suppose you might argue that it's correct to list them by their given names, and I am assuming that that's what they all are, without researching every single one. But you don't follow that practice in the newspaper and no one else does either - and there is also disparity in the titles, with Jim Black listed as "Former Speaker" but Mr. Edwards disparaged with only "Candidate" - since when is that appropriate standing alone, without including either "presidential" or "former senator?" I also don't believe using "H. Majority Leader" or "S. minority leader," or for that matter, "Former speaker" is appropriate either. There's lots of room in that box, and you need to include the body in which each profiled individual serves - assuming, that is, that it is for the use of the general public on the web and not an internal document for those who already know who these people are.

This looks to me like the unsupervised and unreviewed work of an intern – or should I say, that would be the only possible explanation, while still not excusing its appearing in a product trumpeted on the top of the home page of your website. Most of the profiles indicate that they were last modified days ago, and still no one appears to have noticed a little problem. This does not bode well for the future of that web section.

05/07/07 at 14:43
I don't know whether any of you get email alerts about posts to this blog, so I may be speaking into the abyss here. Even so, I figure here is the place to note that a) the problems with the Dome website noted above have been fixed (mostly - apparently the unsuitable abbreviations don't bother you as much as they do me) and b) as of today, it appears the problem that was engineered into the "Printer Friendly" function some months ago has been fixed. I've only tried four or five articles, but they all resulted in an actual usable, printer-friendly page.

Thanks for paying attention, sort of, sometimes!