Concerns About Information


We'll now concentrate on the forum, or knowledge base as it may well become. This section deals with the information held and, above all, the accuracy, usefulness, and security of that information and its use. We'll also look at how people can be encouraged to participate in a forum and share their knowledge and also the duties of the moderators and administrators. We'll look at the following:

  • Security

  • Privacy and accountability

  • Validity and relevance

  • Accessibility (from where?)

  • Misleading or defamatory postings. Legal requirements

  • Updating and keeping information current

  • Moderation and administration

  • Involvement

Security

The information being generated in an intranet forum is potentially some of the most valuable in the company. It is what concerns people now - not a dry set of published procedures. It's a resource of information helpful in employees' day-to-day business. Because it is useful to your employees, it will be of interest to other parties too.

Examine the information held (or potentially held) within your system. How sensitive is it? How secure is it? Does it contain anything that's useful to competitors? If you don't want the information to be seen, then pay particular attention when setting up the security on your intranet, especially when dealing with any kind of remote access.

There's also the issue of security within and between groups within the company - should the shop floor know of the workings of the payroll system? Should payroll need to know about the design of the latest widget? Do they need to know? Two groups of people will need to keep their information secure - Personnel, or Human Resources as it seems to have morphed into, and the management team. Both of these need secure information, so ask yourself whether your systems can allow this level of security. If you're setting up forums of this type, then you may consider setting up access based on username so that the presence of the forum is not advertised except to those who are entitled to access these parts of the forum. You may also consider using this form of access restriction when testing new forums or new aspects of your system.

Employees will move departments and responsibilities - and in the course of their employment will require different levels of access into the forums - so a name-based access permission would work here - you can add them to see (or not) areas relevant to their work.

There's also the converse argument - if some forums are blocked against certain groups of people then is the company going to be accused of conspiracy? This is a facet of human nature that, if not handled correctly, can give you a sticky ride.

One of the obvious answers is to make a trial setup and test all of the issues you've identified. Create some forums and see how people react - publicize what you're doing to a small group of people. Depending on how your company is structured you'll get the reaction you want and offers of help or not. But here we digress and will deal with forum setup a little later.

Privacy and Accountability

This doesn't just apply to forums, but to the whole intranet setup. Let us suppose that your systems administrator has gone forum-happy and everything on the intranet is on a forum. Yes, it's an easy option as then it gets maximum flexibility, but if someone provides personal information then that person has a right to expect privacy. Securing that information can be problematic, and for this reason alone it is one of the areas best avoided when declaring what sort of information is going to be presented in the context of a forum. So, not that you would, please don't become the forum happy system administrator - it'll get you into deep water.

Another aside, having personnel information accessible on the intranet itself is beset with security problems. A case in point came up when it was declared that all personnel information was going to be available on the company intranet. And it was all duly loaded - and everyone could see everything. The problem was that those who declared that the information should be so loaded had a set of tools at their disposal and made use of that set of tools. The system administrators who noticed their omission then had to put in some very long hours putting in security that should have been designed into the system in the first place. And so all's well that ends well, but unfortunately, not quite as well as could have been expected.

Obviously it goes without saying (and is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight) as with all systems, the intranet should have been designed in the correct way from the start. And even now most employees request the information by e-mail or paper record.

"If your information is potentially personally sensitive, don't create a forum for it"

If your information is potentially personally sensitive, don't create a forum for it. Obviously, there will always be exceptions, for example an employment agency where the nature of the work is dealing in personal information where consultants are passing data round to each other. So you have to make judgments based on the circumstances of the company in which you work.

It also pays us to look at the legal responsibility for the information supplied within your intranet and within your forums in particular. Let's say a question is asked and someone gives a wrong answer which may lead to incorrect procedures being applied or worse, some safety item not working the way it was intended. Who is then responsible for the mistake? The provider of that incorrect information? You as the administrator of the forum? The moderator for not picking it up quickly enough? Or the person applying the answer? Hoping this question is never going to occur is burying heads in the sand, however trying to tie down the accuracy of the information too much by over-moderating will quickly lead to other problems. This whole question is one of the most difficult because there can be no right answer. You are reliant on the goodwill and accuracy of the information provider; not many people are going to deliberately set out to provide incorrect information, so this problem may diminish or increase in importance for your own intranet. The answer here is good and efficient (and regular) moderator involvement.

On any forum, whether Internet or intranet, you're going to get someone with a problem about using the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content. If the posting has a name attached you can do something about it, if it doesn't (is anonymous) you have a detective job to do. If you only permit posting from registered people you limit the likelihood of arguments (also known as flames) occurring in the first place, but don't eliminate them entirely. What needs to be pointed out is that the intranet is a company-wide communications device and can be seen by management as well as immediate colleagues, therefore some sort of restraint is desirable.

Finally, it should also be possible to report a post to the administrator or moderator so that objectionable content can be detected and passed to the moderator or administrator. You will be much safer if you compelling your users to register so that any posting is instantly traceable and accountable. The user's name, department, e-mail address, and phone number should be required with registration, and automatically affixed to each post. Linking forum login to the users' network login is also an option. It is also more comfortable from the users' point of view as information can be seen as emanating from a names and known source.

Validity

As new users come on to your forum they may well post in the wrong place before they are familiar with the structures you placed in the forums. If not, you may have to move it. If it is moved without reference then you may end up alienating the user. A standard practice employed on many of the forums on the Internet where effective moderation does take place (and there are many where this does not occur) is that the thread is moved but a reference is left in the original place. In addition, if this is done, an e-mail is sent to the contributor so that there are no bitter feelings about being shortchanged.

Now if this is happening too frequently it is either that your user base doesn't understand where or how to post, they don't read your explicit instructions, or some other cause. It could be that your instructions are not read because users just don't understand where they are or that they're couched in terms they don't understand. It's a common problem that's easily addressed.

Another reason may be that your originally designed forum structure does not allow for the postings that they're trying to make. You may have made the structure of your forum too inflexible. As an example, let's invent the structure of a software forum.

Let's say we've got the following topics: Visual Basic, IIS, and .NET and then someone wants to ask question about: Java, Apache, and Tomcat; either they will have to ask their questions in the wrong forum, or keep silent. It would have been wiser to start off with more general forums first, then creating more specialized forums later as necessary.

So what's best? As in all things, a balance between structure and evolution, a balance between formalization of structure and flexibility to change. If you as forum administrator are too rigid then you lose much of your users' input, if you're too flexible you get questions from management. If this sounds like I'm talking from experience, then you'd be right!

Accessibility

The big issue with accessibility concerns disabled users of your intranet information. You may not know that any of your users are disabled in any way, and they may not want you to know either. So what can you do about it? And why do you need to do anything about it? The answer is quite simple - most countries have disability discriminations legislation: The UK and Australia have their own Disability Discrimination Acts, Canada has Human Rights legislation, the USA has Section 508; to avoid me going on with a long and boring list, someone in your organization is going to be affected at some time. Even if it's color blindness, which affects 1 in 20 of white males, you may have to be careful in how you design your forums. For instance, is there a set of traffic lights that indicates how a query is progressing? If so, can a person who is colorblind distinguish between the red and the green (the most common form)?

The first thing is to ensure that your forum generates code to Web Standards as recommended in Chapter 4. Excellent information on applicable standards can be found at http://www.webstandards.org. This will at least give you the basis of a good design to start. What you need to check is that the HTML pages generated by your forum programs are valid and accessible. The second thing is to test the code. You can use a non-graphical browser such as Lynx which renders your page in text-only format. This is a good emulation of speech readers and is only a small download from http://www.lynx.org. It's also possible to do accessibility testing with the Opera browser. Opera 6 and earlier have settings to easily disable tables, font styles, and colors with the press of a button. Opera 7 has several accessibility-minded style sheets built in.

The principles of accessible web sites are well-documented in Constructing Accessible Web Sites (Jim Thatcher et al, glasshaus, ISBN 1-904151-00-0).

"You may not know that any of your users are disabled in any way, and they may not want you to know either"

Note

So is all this just for the minority of people with disabilities? Well not really, because your forum may be required to be rendered on a PDA or similar device with a screen resolution of something like 160 by 160. Your people on customers' sites may have need of the information in your forums.

Another related point is the accessibility of forum content to employees in various situations. Suppose that one of the employees is using the information on the intranet forum to solve a problem on a customer's site. The forum contains some technical information about the product along with troubleshooting advice about installation problems. The employee performing the installation may well have a different skill set from those who have produced the product. The employee will need to know with clarity what should happen, and what they should do when problems occur. They may be in different time zone or not understand your forum language and are using a translation engine. They may have to follow a discussion thread to find the answer if the solution has not yet reached your knowledge base.

Note

By having a forum that is coded to standards you will have been able to fulfill that requirement before you even know you have it, as the new toys are in the hands of senior management before any of the techies know that they're in the shops. And senior management have a habit of trying things out and then wandering along to see you if things aren't as they expect, And that sort of visit takes time.

So all this means just one thing - clarity and transparency. This should be encouraged, but it's not just going to happen without some sort of administrative control. If your forums are going to be viewable from outside the immediate confines of the company, via RAS or VPN, you will have to consider the implications of their content. You may have enabled this so that your staff can access in-house information whilst on a customer's site. It may also be that the customer can look over your employee's shoulder when they're legitimately reading posting on your intranet.

Legal Implications of Unsuitable Postings

We've already discussed the need for the information contained on your forum to be accurate. But what about the tone of the posting? That can have an effect on how the posting is perceived by other users. You may also have a flame war where parties tend to express their feelings in rude and abusive postings, despite what you declare as official forum policy. And invariably if someone posts in, shall we say, a strong way on one of your forums, it'll be noticed by senior management before you notice.

In these circumstances legal requirements are important, but the "cold shoulder factor" seems even more pressing. How is Bob going to act around Ted, after Ted tore into him on the forum because Bob thought ASP was better than PHP? Who gets to have the fun conversation with Bob and Ted where they are told to shake hands and apologize? The social dynamics of active forums can be interesting to those on the outside, but may be more of a challenge to those who may have to keep the peace.

"You can inadvertently make the forum look ridiculous by putting too many barriers in the way of normal discourse"

You cannot automatically detect instances of these, so it's up to the moderators to take action. As part of the conditions of use of the forum (the small print) you will have published what you do. As a suggestion in the Control section below we have a template for battle-tested forum conditions of use, so to speak. What this means is that after one unsatisfactory posting the user gets a warning, after two they're suspended. This is usually enough. Further sanctions would necessitate your company's disciplinary procedure to be invoked, so if you think this may be a problem check the disciplinary paths open to you. There's usually a catch-all to cover you, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

You may also get bad language on the forum - and your profanity filters can take care of most of that. However beware what you are doing. How about someone in your organization called Woodcock, the name of a perfectly ordinary game bird? Would your profanity filter cope with that or throw the name out. In the dictionary there are a hundred definitions for words beginning "cock", yet only one is vulgar. Also, what if your forum concerns chickens? You can inadvertently make the forum look ridiculous by putting too many barriers in the way of normal discourse, which is not what you want to do. By all means insert the usual four letters words, but be aware - are you running a business or a Sunday afternoon children's tea party?

Updating

All information gets stale. In your original design for your forums it would be prudent to budget some time for someone to regularly take the time to make sure we're up-to-date. This should be a normal moderator task, putting expired threads into an archive area so that your main front forum stays fresh. You should also remember to publicize the existence of the archive area when you set it up.

Many forum applications usually bring threads with the latest postings to the top, so your decision process can be made easier. Making decisions about what to archive is best done by the moderators of each forum - they will probably have a better understanding of their subjects than the administrator. Depending on the software, if users are allowed to rank threads themselves according to their own criteria of interest they could sort by this ranking, and you would have an idea when a thread is dead. Some of the criteria when to archive could be:

  • The forum/topic is getting too big and slow

  • The focus of the topic has changed

  • The topic hasn't had any postings in a long time.

  • There is a policy change within the company.

Moderation and Administration

Moderator

A moderator for a topic has responsibility and control for all the posts in that topic. Ideally they should be familiar with the technical nature of the items that will be discussed. Administrators will not usually have the same level of control within the topic unless they also declare themselves to be a moderator.

A moderator should:

  • Promote the topic and forums

  • Take responsibility for the content of the topics under their control

  • If they have reason, alter the posting by deletion, moving, or editing, always contacting the original poster when they do this via e-mail and therefore make sure that only registered users can post to the discussion forum. In addition, also make sure that all member names in the posts are linked to the corresponding author (contributor) biographies - so if necessary a reader can check if the posts have come from responsible people. Secondly, also provide for a link which can report the post and the contributor's name to the administrator or moderator if the contributor has abused his rights (for instance by spamming the forum unnecessarily or by cross-posting across forums)

  • Ensure that threads are answered if someone has a problem. This is important otherwise you'll get a forum where the majority of the messages are "Why doesn't someone respond to my message"

  • Deal directly with people who post via e-mail or in person if necessary to sort out any problems

  • Use features such as message vetting, objectionable content filters, administrative editing, and deletion capabilities

  • In an ideal world there would be more than one moderator per topic where the traffic warrants. However this is a cost to the intranet as a whole and will affect the ROI if employees are busy moderating and not busy with their normal tasks

Administrator

An administrator is the person who initially sets up the forums and determines their structure. Ideally there should be more than one person of administrator status to cover for holidays and sickness and just to share the load.

Administrators should:

  • Promote the forum and topics.

  • Take administrative responsibility for the whole forum.

  • Appoint moderators - don't try to do the entire task themselves.

  • Be prepared to be the final arbitrator in matters concerning the forum.

  • Appoint themselves as moderators in topics where they have an interest, but balance the workload.

  • Review the work of the moderators.

  • Keep the forum software up to date - modifications usually resolve security issues.

Promotion of the Forum

These points should be used in conjunction with those covered in Chapter 11, Internal Marketing.

Both administrators and moderators should have sufficient faith in the value of the forums to be able to actively promote them. The most important positive message that can be portrayed is enthusiasm for the subject. Here are some tips for promoting the forum:

  • Put a link to the forums on the intranet homepage in a prominent position.

  • Hold short training sessions (short - don't want to take up too much company time, need to prove its simplicity)

  • E-mail promotion - an announcement that forums exist.

  • Put a 'Forum Success Story' (when you have one) on the intranet homepage so that you can point out the value of having the forum.

There will be a number of negative points you may have to overcome. Some of these are:

  • The "Not Built Here" syndrome - if one group in the company think they should have been given the construction, and not you. There is not a lot you can do about this except gracefully back away.

  • The interminable case study - you may be asked to prove and prove again rather than getting on with the job. An answer is to just get on with it and prove the worth by practical means rather than case study. In other words build it and prove its worth.

  • "What if our customers/competitors get hold of the details?" - you will need to prove the security of the intranet. This is a shared responsibility among many people in the organization: network folks, systems administrators, operating system, and application security people

  • Someone "from above" will pounce on the first negative posting as proof that everyone in the company has a negative attitude and this sort of thing should be banned. There is very little you can do to counter negativism of this order. Having your manager firmly on your side will help in this type of case.

Fortunately the forums I've constructed have all been well received and, for the greater part, well used. They've also been the result of the personal effort of a small group of people initially to prove the concept, then a presentation to senior managers to gain approval. It really has helped that the group of people constructing and using the forums have all been enthusiasts for the mode of communication.

Involvement

A forum is no good until it is used, and used fairly extensively. It could be that the forum is the way that people are going to be encouraged to visit the intranet - it just depends on how useful, interesting, or vital to completing the normal day job the intranet is held to be. If people have reasons to post on one of your forums then they have a reason to visit the intranet.

And all of your forums needn't be just about work. There can be others about HR, employee relations, office atmosphere, in-house sports, upcoming social events, new babies, leaving parties, for sale, wanted, that sort of thing. Call it something out of the ordinary - not anything like "Employees Forum" but something like "The Bar" - after all, that's the sort of atmosphere you'd be after here. If people can discover this sort of forum then they're more likely to be interested and to use the main company intranet.

"A live forum means that employees are involved with the intranet"

But above all, a live forum means that employees are involved with the intranet. It's part of your job to ensure that it's projected in the right way so that it does become a useful tool. Precisely how you do it will be dictated by your company setup. But experience has shown that it pays to be inventive and somewhat adventurous.




Practical Intranet Development
Practical Intranet Development
ISBN: 190415123X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 124

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