User talk:Kyle R Mitchell

Hi,

this is your talk page where people can leave you messages. My talk page is: http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/User_talk:David

best

--David 14:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

to find out how to do referencing go to SpinProfiles:A Guide to Referencing

OK --David 15:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Great stuff Kyle. One tip: only one space between paras.

Also, do you have a number of websites you can tell me about and I can investigate RSS feeds? --David 17:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

David,

Thanks for your note. I have sent you an email as well. After a wee bit of research I will send you a list of sites tomorrow evening. Cheers.

water portal

Hi Tommy and Kyle

not sure if you ever visit this talk page Tommy as some old old stuff on there... I love the intro to the issues on the water portal page but as you read on, some parts of it are very academic in language and will prove impenetrable to the public.

I'm thinking of the section, "Context of the water debate" which in itself is a very academic/abstract title. We need to head downstream to a more tabloid style. can u rename someth like "The issues"? or "The problems with water"? Then looking at the text below the heading, the first para is great--simple declarative sentences, some very telling facts--but from 3rd para, "This shift is indeed facilitated by economic globalisation..." the boggle factor is high.

Have a look at the Help page called A Guide to the use of Tone http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/SpinProfiles:A_Guide_to_the_use_of_Tone --section called "Help the reader to understand", esp the bits on the Boggle Factor. I'd head towards simple action-oriented sentences--so-and-so does this, and the effect is that, etc.

Love your articles in the concepts category, as they provide an excellent intro to the main issues around water privatisation. But the title "concepts", while fine for a category for our own use, is not going to pull the public in to read those articles. NB this is not a problem peculiar to yr portal--it affects many of them to different degrees, including my GM portal.

You might want to have a look at what I've had to do on the GM Watch portal to try to get around this problem of accessibility of our articles to the public. http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/GM_Watch:_Portal I've renamed the "Categories" box "Articles" and put in a leader: "An A-Z list of articles on the people and groups behind the push for GM crops and food is here." and then when they click on "here", it's actually a hidden link to the category "GM", which I'm in the process of ensuring all my articles are classed under.

In your case, rather than waiting for the public to grasp that if they want to know what the basic issues are around water, they have click on a Category (what's that?) called "Water: Concepts" (what's that?)---

---cd you perhaps put a sentence in the Issues box saying someth like "Read about the main issues on water here" (hidden link to category). Even better would be to have that lead-in to the whole category AND underneath, a lead-in sentence to each article that you have in the Concepts category with a link, such as "The idea has taken hold among policy-makers that access to water is not a basic human right or a common good to be managed for our benefit, but a commodity to be sold for profit. Read Full Cost Recovery [embedded link to this article]". And then below it, another lead-in sentence to the other article in the Concepts category. As the water pundits, you will know better than I how to lead in to each of these articles.

These introductory bits for the less well-informed (99.9% of folk) need to come towards the top of a page and not be buried at the bottom of a list of categories.

One other tiny thing: this text--"Though we are focused on the international context of the Scottish water industry" may make the public think that the articles are very Scotland-oriented and maybe not so relevant to the wider community, whereas I had a look at some of the articles and many appear to have European and global relevance. I would edit this out as it cuts you down to appear smaller than you are!

Sorry to give you work. These things take time and there are many portal pages that need a similar treatment. Once we have some public-friendly ones up and running, we can use the presentation as models for other pages.

If you get stuck on the technicalities pls email me or David.

thanks guys...--Claire Robinson 16:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)