Comments on: Dealing with legacy content

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:57:00 +0000

I’m not entirely sure what you mean Pactrick. My article is referring to content already online, in which case there would be no need to go back to the source.

By: Patrick Marchese

Patrick Marchese — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:37:00 +0000

I am new to your site and just discovered this article about content. My question is, do you see a need to dig up old legacy files in DTP such as Quark, InDesign and Microsoft Publisher? If so, how would you go about doing something like this?

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:11:27 +0000

Tom, Keeping content up so people in the organisation can use it for reference just seems to put their needs ahead of those of the site's target audience.

There's any number of ways the information you mention could be retrieved without having pages live on the web - through the CMS, through shared documents, through appointments in a calendar. Why should site users have to wade through out-of-date content even if it is clearly labelled. It's still a chore to open pages from a search, discover they refer to years ago, close and go hunting again.

More broadly, in my experience, however you structure it, lazy and uncommitted content 'owners' will find a way to blame someone else if they don't keep their content up to date and it is retired as a result.

You can produce the policy, show them the email that went to them to remind them, demonstrate the page hasn't been updated for however long and the worst offenders will reply: I did reply to that email/ I never received it/ I edited the page with acres of fabulous new content only yesterday, for sure, and you must have lost it, what have you done, the page was great and you've ruined it by somehow switching it back to old content etc etc.

Jaded, I know...

By: WPWebHost

WPWebHost — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:56:45 +0000

As much as how social media has evolved, do you think that people still read legacy post or contents?

I somehow doubt that only latest and newest content should ever be posted in FB or tweeted. Legacy content still once a useful content and nonetheless might still be applicable.

By: m

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:11:45 +0000

“The most likely reaction in my experience is to ignore it. If they do that the content will be unpublished.”

o.k. must have overlooked this.

“You could always put measures in place to prevent this of course. Even something as simple as the wording of the checkbox might help e.g. “I (insert name) confirm that all of the content contained on this page is both up-to-date and reflects [insert organisation] in a good light” This kind of legal phrasing will make people take it more seriously.”

that is true.

however, the owner needs to really take care of his pages and all of their content which in my experience is - unfortunately - often enough not the case. true for most 'small to middle sized’ clients. here’s hope that this will change :)

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:41:43 +0000

The most likely reaction in my experience is to ignore it. If they do that the content will be unpublished. You could always put measures in place to prevent this of course. Even something as simple as the wording of the checkbox might help e.g. "I (insert name) confirm that all of the content contained on this page is both up-to-date and reflects [insert organisation] in a good light" This kind of legal phrasing will make people take it more seriously.

By: m

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:32:10 +0000

i mean 90%. please correct. thanks.

By: m

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:30:32 +0000

„There is nothing stopping a content provider just checking the ‘this page is up-to-date’ box without properly reviewing the content.“

that is most likely what is going to happen since that is the standard reaction to automated mails and notifications. 980% chance that these are coming when you have something else stuff to do.

also, long comments go unread that’s why i stop here :)

By: me

me — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:25:13 +0000

The picture of the orange highlighter after "Automated Review Points" says SEXCHANGE above the highlighter.

CANNOT BE UNSEEN!

By: Ryan Griffith

Ryan Griffith — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:05:38 +0000

What a good read Paul. Now you have me thinking how to work some web services magic in Cascade Server to run some automated auditing on our content. :)

I like how this coincides with one of your older posts about dealing with dated content. I liked the concept of removing from navigation and un-publishing to see if anyone even notices. Like you mentioned though, the problem is not really the removal, it's who should be the one to determine what what to do with the content. I've been dealing with content that is in that gray area of keep or remove, it's a tough one.