Mark Old Requests, Responses, and Released Material "Archived"

[RichardTaylor]

Old requests; eg. those on which there has been no correspondence for say 12 months should be labelled "archived" in a prominent fashion eg. a banner near the top of the page.

The notice ought appear on HTML versions of documents as well as the main request page.

A statement that the information released may be out of date could be included to draw users' attention to that fact.

One reason for making this suggestion is it may aid making the argument that Alaveteli sites can and ought keep information on the site even when it becomes out-of-date.

[frabcus]

As another suggestion (and this is a detailed question, in the sense
that the aesthetic design really really matters):

• The date of requests could be more clearly presented in general
  in the layout of the page. I can imagine something where the year is
  quite a large digit with the month/day below (like a calendar), so old
  information is just naturally clear.
• And shown at all in the banner on the HTML version of documents.

The above doesn't preclude also changing the display when it is
more than 12 months old. But it might have other advantages in lots of
cases.

Francis

[TomSteinberg]

cf #1523

[RichardTaylor]

There's been a request on WhatDoTheyKnow to mark an out of date PDF attachment released in response to a request as archived or similar; this would involve amending the PDF in some manner.

[RichardTaylor]

A WhatDoTheyKnow user just got touch about out of date material they'd come across on a "view as HTML" page, so without a date at the top. I said I'd see if we could do more to stress the fact the information is old - hence this comment.

Just adding the date to the header on view as HTML pages might have helped in this case.

[RichardTaylor]

Just adding a +1 because a council wanted WhatDoTheyKnow to replace an old PDF document with a more up to date version because people were finding the old one on our site (and, so we were told, phoning an outdated phone number in it).

Can you reliably programmatically insert a cover page into a PDF? Would the downside of meddling with / editing content be outweighed by the benefits? A side effect of slipping in a cover page could be making users who currently arrive directly to a PDF document aware of the Alaveteli site and providing them with a link to the request.

[RichardTaylor]

A further +1; a council wrote to WhatDoTheyKnow saying:

This strategy document is now out of date. It has been superseded by new Central Government policy and strategy documents along with local strategy documents/polices in line with these new Central Government policies and guidance.

As such the Strategy dated from 2008 is now no longer in line with how we are working, our aims or objectives and could be misleading to members of the public searching for relevant information about how [xxx] Council is working in this area.

We have removed all such documents from our own public website and request that you follow suit to ensure that local residents and anyone else with an interest is not confused by accessing out of date information.

[garethrees]

We have removed all such documents from our own public website and request that you follow suit to ensure that local residents and anyone else with an interest is not confused by accessing out of date information.

-1 in this case – there's definitely value in being able to see how strategy changes over time.

[garethrees]

We now at least show when requests are closed to new correspondence #4958

[RichardTaylor]

Often documents released in response to FOI requests are undated. Publishing out of date, undated, documents can cause confusion as noted in a previous comment.

Worse than confusion though is the risk of out of date information being misleading or even potentially defamatory eg. if we're publishing an undated document listing doctors subject to regulatory action as that information becomes wrong and out of date there's a risk it might not be reasonable to keep publishing it.

[RichardTaylor]

A WhatDoTheyKnow.com user commenting on an old list of medical practices wrote:

Publishing the above information on your website may be misleading and hinders the search for existing and currently providing medical services in this area.

[RichardTaylor]

The Guardian flags old material, eg. "This article is more than 8 years old" at:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/20/woman-arrested-stepping-hill-saline-deaths

[RichardTaylor]

Just adding a +1 following correspondence to WhatDoTheyKnow from an academy trust complaining apparently about a document released by a council listing which schools they run, they wrote:

information you hold is slightly out of date and should be amended as below

This is an example of the kind of correspondence we get. I still think inserting a PDF "compliments slip", "cover page", or some kind of "watermark / header" would be a good idea, with the option for an admin to turn it off or perhaps amend it if it clashes with the content or corrupts a file.

[RichardTaylor]

Adding a +1 following contact from a public body:

this directory is from 2016 and significantly out of date. Telephone numbers are incorrect and to avoid the wrong details being used and people being incorrectly contacted I wonder if these could be removed please

[RichardTaylor]

-1 in this case – there's definitely value in being able to see how strategy changes over time.

Marking an old document with eg. the date it was released assists with this as it helps ensure readers don't mistake an old document for a current one.

[RichardTaylor]

+1

a customer recently downloaded this chart and emailed two senior managers for our [removed] team with important information. However these two members of staff have left employment with us, therefore the email was lost and not responded to.

A note on the top of the document saying it was old might have helped here.

[RichardTaylor]

Addressing this issue might assist with some "right to rectification" cases as we could more easily defend the publication of clearly dated archived material - as being old rather than inaccurate.

[RichardTaylor]

+1

A WhatDoTheyKnow support case today involved someone complaining about out of date contact information for an organisation on the site. This is a common form of correspondence in relation to old material.

Being able to mark material as "archived" on a case by case basis would be better than not being able to do it at all.

[garethrees]

Mechanics here could be:

class InfoRequest
  def archived?
    updated_at > 1.year.ago && allow_new_responses_from == 'nobody'
  end
end

Edit: changed from created_at to updated_at.

[schlos]

Maybe better instead of created_at to use updated_at?
Since we have examples in Croatia where requests get response after few months and more (sometimes even 1y after request gets sent). Or maybe make duration after which is marked as archived a configurable value in general.yml.

[RichardTaylor]

Comment which I don't fully understand from a prioritisation spreadsheet:

Should include fixing the view / download story too (i.e. never render raw PDFs; view in iframe and iframe has download button)

What impact will that have on searchability, the presence of attachments in search engines? We want PDFs etc. released via the site to be in search engines. Ideally, if those PDFs had a cover page (#6674), they'd link to the request/site too.

Can't we just trust browsers to deal with PDFs in the way the user [expects / is used to / has set their system up to do]?

[mdeuk]

The Guardian flags old material…

This is similar to the banner which the National Archives injects into pages covered by the UK Web Archive. It's actually a question in their current user survey (noted at mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme#1268 (comment)), so this suggests they have a similar concern as to ensuring users are aware that they are looking at archived data, and not something 'live'.

[FOIMonkey]

+1 A public authority has contacted us due to the volume of enquiries they are receiving because of old information on WhatDoTheyKnow. People are contacting them to find out if WhatDoTheyKnow is correct or the authority's website.

[garethrees]

Should include fixing the view / download story too

What I'd like to get to here is a much simpler presentation of attachments.

We already know that one of our options is pretty meaningless (#2303).

Instead, I'd like to have just one link next to an attachment: "View".

Clicking that would take you to a page that has a site-branded banner (similar to our current View as HTML Banner). The attachment would either be rendered by a previewer if we have one available (#7027) or rendered natively in HTML.

The banner header would allow a user to "Extract text" – i.e. "View as HTML", but where we could use more modern text recognition tools at some point – or "Download original" – i.e. download the unaltered file to their computer.

This setup would give us a consistent banner and site branding everywhere we present an attachment. We could then append to this banner for old content:

What impact will that have on searchability, the presence of attachments in search engines?

This is a good question and something we'd want to check before committing to this approach.

[garethrees]

The Guardian flags old material

Some extra context https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2019/apr/02/why-were-making-the-age-of-our-journalism-clearer