On 4 January 2011 20:11, Mark Goodge <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Has this contact been since the election, or mostly before?

Entirely before. Since the election I haven't got particularly
involved in political campaigning. I'm not sure I'm particularly good
at it, though I'm willing to learn how.

>
> Can you explain, in fairly simple terms, why it isn't sufficient? I mean, I
> don't have all that much use for law reports most of the time, but I am a
> web author and I think that Bailii is pretty badly presented from a
> technical point of view. But lots of official or semi-official websites are
> pretty badly presented, and "I reckon I could do better" isn't necessarily a
> particularly strong argument :-)
>

* It makes difficult any kind of useful meta-analysis of judgments
(the sort of thing Nick is trying to do).

* Google won't search it (though it can pick up pages linked from
elsewhere), so you have to use its own search engine. That makes
finding cases that match any particular criterion very difficult and
means members of the public (who won't know to look there) won't find
relevant material  because its hidden behind the bailii wall.

* Any attempt to build a system that does present it better is not
going to work.

OK. Not the strongest arguments in the world. But there's no *good*
reason for information to be given solely to bailii anyway (there are
numerous specious ones).

Maybe I notice this more because I'm a lawyer and I often find myself
searching bailii and having to use their appalling search engine.

But exactly the same thing is true of (say) theyworkforyou. After all
you can read Hansard on the web. "All" it does is present it a bit
better 8-).

-- 
Francis Davey

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