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Diffstat (limited to '_posts')
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diff --git a/_posts/2011-07-04-asktheeu-and-informata-zyrtare-at-okcon201.markdown b/_posts/2011-07-04-asktheeu-and-informata-zyrtare-at-okcon201.markdown index e50ac93b6..88c0d5375 100644 --- a/_posts/2011-07-04-asktheeu-and-informata-zyrtare-at-okcon201.markdown +++ b/_posts/2011-07-04-asktheeu-and-informata-zyrtare-at-okcon201.markdown @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ tags: - whatdotheyknow --- -Last week I travelled to Berlin to meet with [@dcabo](http://twitter.com/#!/dcabo), [@helen_access](http://twitter.com/#!/helen_access) and [@KerstiRu](http://twitter.com/#!/KerstiRu) of [Access Info Europe](http://www.access-info.org/) and Valon Brestovci of [Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova](http://www.flossk.org/) (FLOSSK) to discuss and plan collaboration on the first Alaveteli-driven websites: _AskTheEu_ and _Informata Zyrtare_. +Last week I travelled to Berlin to meet with [@dcabo](https://twitter.com/#!/dcabo), [@helen_access](https://twitter.com/#!/helen_access) and [@KerstiRu](https://twitter.com/#!/KerstiRu) of [Access Info Europe](http://www.access-info.org/) and Valon Brestovci of [Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova](http://www.flossk.org/) (FLOSSK) to discuss and plan collaboration on the first Alaveteli-driven websites: _AskTheEu_ and _Informata Zyrtare_. {% include image.html url="/assets/img/foamthing.jpg" description="Open hardware milling machine at OKCon" width="223" %} diff --git a/_posts/2011-07-29-you-need-volunteers-to-make-your-website-work.markdown b/_posts/2011-07-29-you-need-volunteers-to-make-your-website-work.markdown index 0646e26d1..be98b6c39 100644 --- a/_posts/2011-07-29-you-need-volunteers-to-make-your-website-work.markdown +++ b/_posts/2011-07-29-you-need-volunteers-to-make-your-website-work.markdown @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ A successful Alaveteli website is nothing without its volunteers. These are pe [WhatDoTheyKnow](http://www.whatdotheyknow.com) has an amazing volunteer pool of around six or seven people, of whom about three are active at any one time (it varies depending on their other commitments). They are dedicated, committed, knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and the website quite simply wouldn't function without them. -So, how did WhatDoTheyKnow recruit this team of experts? I spoke with the original author of WhatDoTheyKnow, [Francis Irving](http://twitter.com/#!/frabcus), to find out. +So, how did WhatDoTheyKnow recruit this team of experts? I spoke with the original author of WhatDoTheyKnow, [Francis Irving](https://twitter.com/#!/frabcus), to find out. >At mySociety, we had a pool of people on our mailing lists who had been waiting for years for something to get involved in. We found a way early on of letting people contribute really easily, and this became a route to finding volunteers who were really good: diff --git a/_posts/2012-04-16-a-right-to-know-site-for-spain.markdown b/_posts/2012-04-16-a-right-to-know-site-for-spain.markdown index e58043aac..1c9146b4e 100644 --- a/_posts/2012-04-16-a-right-to-know-site-for-spain.markdown +++ b/_posts/2012-04-16-a-right-to-know-site-for-spain.markdown @@ -8,14 +8,11 @@ title: A Right-to-Know site for Spain wordpress_id: 339 --- -##  - - [Tuderechoasaber.es](http://www.tuderechoasaber.es/) is Spain’s brand new Right-to-Know site, built on Alaveteli. The project is managed by David Cabo and Victoria Anderica, and it launches against a fascinating political background. When the project was started, Spain was one of four EU countries with no Freedom of Information law. The subject was, however, on the political agenda – FOI had been promised, but not delivered, by the previous government in both 2004 and 2008. On election in December 2011, the new conservative ruling party again pledged to introduce Freedom of Information, within their first 100 days in office. -Anderica works at the organisation [Access Info Europe](http://www.access-info.org/), which had been campaigning, with the support of NGOs including Amnesty International and Greenpeace, for a Freedom of Information law. Cabo is one of the founders of [Civio](http://www.civio.es/), a new organisation hoping to emulate the work of [mySociety](http://www.mysociety.org/) or the [Sunlight Foundation](http://sunlightfoundation.com/), in Spain. The combination of Access Info and Civio’s knowledge – legal and technical – meant that Tuderechoasaber.es could become a reality. +Anderica works at the organisation [Access Info Europe](http://www.access-info.org/), which had been campaigning, with the support of NGOs including Amnesty International and Greenpeace, for a Freedom of Information law. Cabo is one of the founders of [Civio](http://www.civio.es/), a new organisation hoping to emulate the work of [mySociety](https://www.mysociety.org/) or the [Sunlight Foundation](http://sunlightfoundation.com/), in Spain. The combination of Access Info and Civio’s knowledge – legal and technical – meant that Tuderechoasaber.es could become a reality. There was such public thirst for these withheld rights that Cabo and Anderica were able to fund their website through crowdsourced donations. They raised €6,000 and the site was built. diff --git a/_posts/2012-04-16-alavetelicon-community-cakes-and-black-boxes.markdown b/_posts/2012-04-16-alavetelicon-community-cakes-and-black-boxes.markdown index 6009722fb..aec6fcf77 100644 --- a/_posts/2012-04-16-alavetelicon-community-cakes-and-black-boxes.markdown +++ b/_posts/2012-04-16-alavetelicon-community-cakes-and-black-boxes.markdown @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ I'm not sure what conclusion to take from this, exactly. It remains the case tha Lots of people at the conference asked for more statistics to be made available on Alaveteli sites. mySociety has always been a little reluctant to release statistics, because they are so easy to spin or misinterpret. However, delegates repeatedly referred to their power for campaigning. The psychological impact of a big red cross next to your organisation's name, which you can remedy through positive action, is a powerful motivator. One idea that was mooted was to award a real-life prize (a.k.a. [Cake and Fireworks](https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/issues/438)) to the "top" authorities in various categories each year. I think this is a great idea. **3. Black Box APIs** -[Acesso Inteligente](www.accesointeligente.org) is an FOI website in Chile that doesn't use Alaveteli. In Chile, all FOI requests must be made via various different web forms. Accesso Inteligente is a tremendous technical achievement which automatically posts requests to the correct organisation's form, and "screen scrapes" the results, giving Chilean citizens a uniform interface to make all FOI requests. +[Acesso Inteligente](https://www.accesointeligente.org/AccesoInteligente/#home) is an FOI website in Chile that doesn't use Alaveteli. In Chile, all FOI requests must be made via various different web forms. Accesso Inteligente is a tremendous technical achievement which automatically posts requests to the correct organisation's form, and "screen scrapes" the results, giving Chilean citizens a uniform interface to make all FOI requests. The team behind the website would love to use Alaveteli as their front end system. The concept they've come up with is deceptively simple: repackage their form-posting-and-scraping functionality as a "black box" which acts as if it's an authority that accepts FOI requests by emails, and sends the answers by email. They can then install Alaveteli without any modifications, and configure it to send FOI requests to the relevant "black box" email addresses. diff --git a/_posts/2012-05-15-8-steps-to-understanding-and-implementing-alaveteli.markdown b/_posts/2012-05-15-8-steps-to-understanding-and-implementing-alaveteli.markdown index cfa8c15b9..60fcb4ca5 100644 --- a/_posts/2012-05-15-8-steps-to-understanding-and-implementing-alaveteli.markdown +++ b/_posts/2012-05-15-8-steps-to-understanding-and-implementing-alaveteli.markdown @@ -67,11 +67,11 @@ Here, in eight points, is the key to understanding why Alaveteli has excited adv * The Alaveteli code has been translated into 8 languages. -[Dolores Lavalle Cobo](http://twitter.com/dololavalle), a lawyer and specialist in access to public information, says Alaveteli revolutionises the concept of what it means to share information, and creates a change of mentality in the people. +[Dolores Lavalle Cobo](https://twitter.com/dololavalle), a lawyer and specialist in access to public information, says Alaveteli revolutionises the concept of what it means to share information, and creates a change of mentality in the people. She’s not exaggerating. This software is a testament to how technology, enthusiasm and a commitment to transparency can create a tool without limits for citizen participation. -Meanwhile, public policy consultant [Germain Stalker](http://twitter.com/stalkerGer) agrees with this definition: "Alaveteli universalises access to information, allowing the public documents held by the State to acquire real and tangible value." +Meanwhile, public policy consultant [Germain Stalker](https://twitter.com/stalkerGer) agrees with this definition: "Alaveteli universalises access to information, allowing the public documents held by the State to acquire real and tangible value." Nothing is more certain than this. Demanding transparency is a task for the people, and the platform has awakened interest in what governments do, as never before. diff --git a/_posts/2012-06-20-the-new-bootstrap-admin-theme.markdown b/_posts/2012-06-20-the-new-bootstrap-admin-theme.markdown index 0feac3e78..00343fb66 100644 --- a/_posts/2012-06-20-the-new-bootstrap-admin-theme.markdown +++ b/_posts/2012-06-20-the-new-bootstrap-admin-theme.markdown @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ One of the major new features in the latest release of Alaveteli is a more attra {% include image.html url="/assets/img/oldnew.png" description="Admin interface before and after" width="643" %} -The theme was started at AlaveteliCon by [@wombleton](https://twitter.com/#!/wombleton). It's based on Twitter's [Bootstrap framework](http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/), a CSS-and-javascript foundation for layout and styling of websites. It tries to collapse the large amounts of data often found on a single page into smaller chunks that can be scanned more easily. +The theme was started at AlaveteliCon by [@wombleton](https://twitter.com/#!/wombleton). It's based on Twitter's [Bootstrap framework](https://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/), a CSS-and-javascript foundation for layout and styling of websites. It tries to collapse the large amounts of data often found on a single page into smaller chunks that can be scanned more easily. When I started integrating the new code into the Alaveteli core, I realised that this might be quite a big and potentially unwanted step for users who are used to the old interface. So I moved all the interface changes [into their own theme](https://github.com/mysociety/adminbootstraptheme), which can be installed or uninstalled by changing [a line in the configuration file](https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/blob/2e69a53ff5c3e15dd5a7a0fcb5f8fcedf3d6f778/config/general.yml-example#L37). diff --git a/_posts/2012-06-21-new-feature-following-and-the-wall.markdown b/_posts/2012-06-21-new-feature-following-and-the-wall.markdown index df6bb6ef5..a776a4648 100644 --- a/_posts/2012-06-21-new-feature-following-and-the-wall.markdown +++ b/_posts/2012-06-21-new-feature-following-and-the-wall.markdown @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ title: 'New feature: "following" and the "wall"' wordpress_id: 369 --- -You've always been able to subscribe to email alerts about requests. However, since WhatDoTheyKnow (the predecessor to Alaveteli) was first conceived, [certain](http://www.facebook.com) [well-known](http://twitter.com) websites have become the primary way many of us interact with the internet. So we decided to use some of their technology. Instead of subscribing to alerts, you now follow topics. And when you follow a topic, by default this still means you get email; but you can turn email alerts off, and choose to view updates on a new "wall" area. +You've always been able to subscribe to email alerts about requests. However, since WhatDoTheyKnow (the predecessor to Alaveteli) was first conceived, [certain](http://www.facebook.com) [well-known](https://twitter.com) websites have become the primary way many of us interact with the internet. So we decided to use some of their technology. Instead of subscribing to alerts, you now follow topics. And when you follow a topic, by default this still means you get email; but you can turn email alerts off, and choose to view updates on a new "wall" area. Here's the _"Follow"_ button: |