BSAC Website

[David Walker]

I was just typing this in reply to a message in the Instructor Forum about requirements for teaching O2, but it kind of developed into something wider...

With so much difficulty in finding what the requirements are for something as simple as who can teach a very very common SDC, it made me think that this is really showing that the BSAC website needs some huge improvements (deleting obsolete pages would be a start!). I don't know anyone who thinks the website is easy to use (from new trainee Ocean Divers to FCDs and Area Coaches), finding things is an absolute nightmare, and when you do find things its very difficult to know what is current and what is not. The 2005 POE was supposed to be on now, and I found it last week, but today I was looking for dates for a course next year and i'm buggered if I could find a link to the 2005 POE! Lots of the SDCs still mention that they are options for Advanced Diver, despite the syllabus having changed 2-3 years ago - there is no mention of that, and that's even after the SDC section was supposed to have been completely overhauled.

How many people do BSAC have who have responsibility for looking after the website?

I know there are at least a couple of the BSAC Council Menbers who post here regularly - has the state of the website ever been properly discussed at a high level within BSAC? If not, can I suggest that it is seriously looked at and discussed? Not sure how BSAC work in terms of deciding what is a priority, but would be nice to have some improvements, even if it is just the basics of going through and deleting all the obsolete pages. In reality it is probably the foremost method of communication BSAC have with its members, and it really isn't very inviting or clear.

Cheers

David

[tsdiver]

As a BSAC Direct member I look forward to the e mail updates and regular news letters,however an up grade to the web site is long overdue.Some features are so out of date,the News Flash for example hardly ever changes month to month!Hope we can look forward to a revamp soon ?

[Keith Lawrence(BSAC)]

Hi David

My reply will jump around a little but I hope that I can cover all of your points, please feel free to ask for any clarification. The easy one first ?

How many people do BSAC have who have responsibility for looking after the website?

If you?re talking about responsibility then the answer is one ? ME. As an elected representative of the members and the leader of the BSAC IT Team then it is all MY responsibility. No, I don?t do it all myself, in fact I do very little of the actual work ? but it?s still MY fault and my responsibility if it isn?t right! My authority is delegated to me by Council, I report directly to Council, so it?s me who you shout at David :-)

OK, the actual team ? overall authority for the BSAC web sites I delegate to Mike B, our webmaster. Mike acts as the Editor In Chief for all of the BSAC web sites. Mike further delegates areas or parts of web sites to others, e.g. HQ maintain the Technical sections and the shop, a lot of the Travel Club is done by volunteer contributors.

That?s just a bit of background to let you know how it all works. I?ll raise issues with Council, Council will give me directions, it?s my job to implement those Council decisions.

With so much difficulty in finding what the requirements are for something as simple as who can teach a very very common SDC, it made me think that this is really showing that the BSAC website needs some huge improvements (deleting obsolete pages would be a start!). I don't know anyone who thinks the website is easy to use (from new trainee Ocean Divers to FCDs and Area Coaches), finding things is an absolute nightmare, and when you do find things its very difficult to know what is current and what is not. The 2005 POE was supposed to be on now, and I found it last week, but today I was looking for dates for a course next year and i'm buggered if I could find a link to the 2005 POE! Lots of the SDCs still mention that they are options for Advanced Diver, despite the syllabus having changed 2-3 years ago - there is no mention of that, and that's even after the SDC section was supposed to have been completely overhauled.

I quoted that in full David because I agree with you, so does Council, so does our webmaster I think you will find. The problem is we have seen huge growth in the area of the web over recent years, the number of sites has expanded significantly, traffic is still expanding at a rate of over 30% per annum, members expectations are growing all of the time. Here I will admit that I misjudged the situation, I thought that growth would slow, it hasn?t, since I took over the IT function within the BSAC I estimate that growth in web services has been in the order of over 200%. The problem is that it is organic growth rather than planned growth, the scale of it caught me by surprise, that is why we find ourselves in the position that we are in now.

I know there are at least a couple of the BSAC Council Menbers who post here regularly - has the state of the website ever been properly discussed at a high level within BSAC? If not, can I suggest that it is seriously looked at and discussed? Not sure how BSAC work in terms of deciding what is a priority, but would be nice to have some improvements, even if it is just the basics of going through and deleting all the obsolete pages. In reality it is probably the foremost method of communication BSAC have with its members, and it really isn't very inviting or clear.

Just to correct you on one small point David, according to our surveys the foremost method of communication that we have is Dive magazine ? but a close second is our web services! Yes, aspects the web sites are often discussed at Council level, we treat them very seriously indeed. The exact problems that you mention I first highlighted to Council about two years ago, at that time we did not have the resources or the budget to do anything about them. But last year I requested and got specific budget and resources for improving both our primary bsac.com and bsac.org sites, this is an ongoing project in the current year, it will probably stretch into next year.

The much smaller bsac.com site has already been revised. Work is ongoing on the bsac.org site under the overall control of the new Communications Team. This work is going on right now with test sites, feedback, meetings and further design work. Our primary bsac.org members site is HUGE, it?s over 0.5GB of disk space with thousands upon thousands of pages ? that?s why it?s taking us some time!

Another area we have been improving on but still have a way to go is with web site integration with other teams and their work, this is already going some way towards addressing the problems that you highlight of obsolete content. The NDC are very active in this area, all new NDC information now has an inbuilt web content element to try and make sure that you get up-to-date information the minute it is available, that includes removing obsolete pages. However, due to the vast amount of legacy information the ?owners? of some parts of the web sites are lost in the midst of time, that is why a complete review is underway.

So, in summary ?

+ It?s my fault, it always is :-) [It goes with the territory]
+ I agree with you that overall bsac.org is poor, that is due to organic growth
+ Council take the web sites very seriously
+ Actions are already underway to address the issues that you have raised

A long answer I know David, I hope that it goes some way towards answering your questions.

Kind Regards

Keith Lawrence
BSAC Council Member
BSAC IT Team Leader

[David Walker]

My reply will jump around a little but I hope that I can cover all of your points, please feel free to ask for any clarification. The easy one first ?

Just to say thanks for getting back to me on that. Timing was a little, ermmm, 'unfortunate' with recent breakages, but nevermind :O)

Anyway, as long as you/BSAC acknowledge that the website is a problem and it has been discussed and plans are in place, then thats all I really wanted to know. Obviously anything with so much information will take a long time to clean up.

The one thing that would still concern me is that despite the new SDC section being put together, there is still some out of date SDC pages around, linked from elsewhere in the site, and also some within the new SDC section. I'd have thought that building a new section would be a good point to delete all the old stuff?

Anyway, good luck with the changes, I know it'll be a long process but i'm sure we'll get there eventually.

Oh yeah, and I don't necessarily believe the stats on Dive magazine compared to the website, but thats another issue.

Sorry for the 'jumpy' response, I had replied when I first saw the post when the forums came back, but that must have been before it was fully working.

David