-Paul M. Reimer
GCWeb organization
Publishing policy
Who may publish information on the GCWeb?
The following persons and organizations will be allowed to publish information on GCWeb.
- official departments, offices, committees and organizations of the college.
- official student organizations.
- currently employed full-time and part-time faculty and staff and retired faculty and staff.
- currently enrolled students.
- Other groups or individuals may be allowed to publish for purposes consistent with the mission of the college at the discretion of the web administrator and upon the recommendation of ITC.
Accounts that allow permission to publish through any web server may be provided to individuals and organizations who meet the criteria listed above. The technical web specialist oversees the establishment of accounts on the main web server.
The web administrator in consultation with the ITC will determine overall account policy--e.g. initial disk quotas, if any for individual accounts, fees for extra space for personal purposes, which groups will have highest-priority access, etc.
Department/Campus unit pages
Departmental pages are at the intersection of two sometimes conflicting impulses--On the one hand, it is desirable to present a unified and coherent picture of Goshen College and its mission as a whole. On the other hand departments have strong identities of their own, and should be encouraged to contribute to a rich, decentralized information system by placing as few administrative constraints on the publishing process as possible.
Pages from academic departments and administrative offices are the responsibility of the department/office head. The first page must be developed in collaboration with the site designer.
Web pages created for departments/units of Goshen College are considered "works for hire". Goshen College owns and retains copyright to all information on the GC web server and other institutional publishing space, excepting personal and non-GC content. GC reserves the right to remove any copyright notices in contradiction to this policy. Web designers may use GC copyrighted materials in non-GC sites only with the permission of the Public Relations department (contact info@goshen.edu).
Student club and organization pages are supervised by respective faculty and staff advisers.
Personal pages
Personal pages are for academic benefit, information, and enjoyment. Personal pages may not be written in such a way as to be mistakenly construed as official pages. The creator assumes all responsibility for the content of the pages. All personal pages must be "signed" (see Maintenance below).The content of all personal pages is subject to the spirit of the Goshen College Commitment to community standards, as outlined in the student handbook, and the letter of the GC computing code of conduct. Personal web pages are not subject to prior review, or routine editorial review (See legal considerations below), but all pages are subject to review upon request by a Goshen College community member. If offenses against the college standards are found, normal judicial procedures will be followed.
All personal home pages (faculty, staff, or student) must carry an officially approved link to this disclaimer:
Access to any student personal page from any public or semi-public page must pass through a page displaying the full disclaimer above.Postings to GCWeb by individuals and student organizations reflect their own thoughts, interests, and activities; they do not implicitly or explicitly represent official positions and policies of Goshen College. Individual page maintainers assume responsibility and liability for the content of their documents.
Please address all comments and other feedback to the owner of the page. For further assistance, contact arachnid@goshen.edu.
For additional information, see the GCWeb Policy [this document].
Standard disclaimer and legal considerations
Carleton College's directions for web publishers note that:Recent court action* holds that on-line providers are responsible for the content of messages sent by their members if the provider claims it exercises editorial control over its subscribers' messages. Carleton will claim no editorial control over material maintained in the individual accounts of staff, faculty and students. To keep a visible distance from "official" Carleton information on the home page, disclaimer notices will appear on personal pages of faculty and staff. Additionally, personal pages of students will be grouped in a clearly labeled area accessible only through designated parts of the official structure. The WWW working group believes such disclaimers will prevent legal complications should inappropriate or unlawful messages make their way onto Carleton's web structure..
and refer to the decisions in Stratton Oakmont, Inc., et al. v. Prodigy Services Company, NY Supreme Court No. 31063/94 (May 24, 1995); Cubby Inc. v. Compuserve Inc., 776 F.Supp. 135 (SDNY 1991); Religious Technology Center, et al. v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc., et al., Case No. C-95 20091 RMW (N.D. Cal. 2/10/95). (SEE http://www.portal.com/)
Commercial use
The primary purpose of the GCWeb infrastructure is to support the mission of Goshen College. To the extent that publishing activity that may be interpreted as 'commercial' is either in the interest of the College or poses little or no burden on the College web infrastructure it is also permitted.
Commercial use of your personal web publishing account
You may use your personal web publishing space to advertise goods and services under the following conditions:
- Illegal activities and any activities judged by the Web administrator
to be at odds with the GC mission will not be allowed.
- Commercial pages must reside within your personal web publishing
folder (currently "mypages"). No links from departmental pages or other
public areas of the GCWeb site to your commercial pages are allowed.
- Other policies that apply to personal page also apply to pages with
a business purpose--including signing your pages and applying a disclaimer.
- An additional disclaimer is necessary for commercial pages. The following
statement should appear at the top of the first page (may be in a small
font) "Goshen College does not explicitly or implicitly endorse
any products or services that are publicized from users' personal accounts."
- See also ITS' restrictions on commmercial use which as of June 2002 include prohibitions of the following kinds of commercial activity:
- Advertising for or promotion of third party businesses.
- promotion of affiliate programs on GC websites.
- receiving payment for your use of GC computers or network bandwidth.
Publicity and advertising on 'public' or 'official' College pages
Well before the advent of the internet many campus units engaged in publicity or promotion of outside interests when it was in the interest of the College. Campus units engaged in publicity also exercised an important screening role. Examples of such activity include:
- Departments posting flyers from graduate schools on department bulletin boards,
- Campus ministries publicizing in the "Campus Communicator" conferences that they felt to be of interest to the campus community,
- Career Services accepting requests to post on Union bulletin boards student job opportunities from employers.
These examples suggest that publicizing events/opportunities/products on the College's website may be done when such publicity:
- is within the scope of the mission of a particular campus unit or department,
- is done with the permission of the director of a particular campus unit or departmet,
- postings are made within the web pages already associated with the appropriate campus unit or department,
The web administrator should be consulted about cases departing from these guidelines.
'Spam'
The web administrator must be available to be contacted by the general public, but this also leads to the administrator being exposed to "spam" or unsolicited e-mail for commercial purposes. The web administrator may choose to pass on commercial solicitations that appear to be of interest to particular College units, but such referral implies no endorsement, and it should be recognized that those who receive referalls from the web administrator are under no obligation to post them.
Maintenance
Every page, whether public, semi-public, or private, must be 'signed' with the name, and current email address (visible on the page, not just a link to an email address) of the page author.Departments, offices, and individuals creating public pages are responsible for timely updating of the text and images. A page manager must be appointed and periodic (at least annual) review of the content must be made. Each public page must be 'signed' with the name, and email address of the page manager, along with the date of last revision. If the page manager is a student, a faculty or staff member must also be indicated.
An example using the <ADDRESS> tags:
Josephine E. Student--josephinees@goshen.edu
Don Blosser--donxb@goshen.eduLast updated: Dec 21, 2001
Additionally, every public page must conform, or be brought into conformance with any other such standards as the web administrator, in consultation with the site designer, may decide upon, e.g. standard navigational elements, footer content, or expiration dates.
