Hi
First, Thanks!
comment inline
On 2006-11-10, at 10:57 , Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
Hi,
I am Peter Vandenabeele and new to this list. I am working
on the improved adoption of Open Standards for document
exchange (ODF et al.) in a Belgian government agency.
When looking at this page
http://bizdev.openoffice.org/consultants.html
for "Belgium", I see a lot of bad links:
* some web sites do not even resolve anymore to a working web site
* some companies are not longer operational in Belgium (out of
business)
* some web sites do not even have the word OpenOffice or any relevant
mentioning on the refered page (or on the web site that they are
part of)
* some only have an e-mail address available, while I would prefer a
real web site.
On the other hand, I miss a few names that I know have
knowledgeable people
and deliver services on OO.o in Belgium.
I have not checked other countries, but I fear there may be similar
problems
(while 'fear' is typically not the best motivation to take
decisions ;-)
Below are a few proposals on how to improve the quality with a few
very basic
criteria for staying listed on the site:
continuous automated checks:
* the entry must resolve to a web-site (not an e-mail address)
* the web-site must be up (not down longer than 30 days)
* the web-site must at least mention some relevant keyword
{OpenOffice.org|OO.o|OOo|StarOffice|ODF}
(this avoids the "domain for sale" web sites and the "US company
with US phone number, advertising for spamming software" to be
counted as valid web sites, each of which category currently
represents at least 1 out of the 8 or so Belgian entries ...)
With these basic checks, dead or irrelevant links are at least
basically
purged.
I find it essential that, to increase adaption of OO.o and ODF, the
quality of
also this aspect must be improved. Once the quality of this list is
improved,
also the more serious companies will be motivated to post their
info on the
list. The list will become a valuable place to be listed if you are
a serious
service provider in the OO.o space.
I am willing to offer some private time to help on this. Since I
used to have a
consultant company, but don't have such a company now, I may be in a
good position for that. Once a policy is established, some
recurring checks
running from any server, checking the listed entries and generating
a monthly
report, could already be a good start to track the entries adhering
to a certain
policy. But, first a policy must be in place ... I am not aware of a
policy at this
time (I have not searched very hard ...).
HTH,
Peter
--
Someone else has also leaped into help and your suggestions and
willingness to help are equally welcome! I'd like to move the
consultants' page to a wiki--consultants.services.openoffice.org--and
also consider charging to be listed. The fee would be minimal and
would go to paying for sustaining the project.
What I can do is grant you access to the project, so that you can fix
the page (along with the other person) and also see about moving it
to (and creating) the wiki...
best
Louis
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