Dear Editor,

Regarding the Jan. 7 article entitled “Designers Credit New
Philosophy for Revitalized Campus Web Site”, we would like to congratulate all
involved on finishing this project. The effort by staff across the campus is
laudable.

Unfortunately, that is all the praise we have for this
project. The administration had the right idea; the campus Web site was in dire
need of a redesign. Issues ranging from navigation to user interface to a lack
of features have plagued visitors. However, the process used to design the new
site — particularly the use of multiple committees to make technical decisions
— was inherently flawed, and this process and its results deserve critique.

Some of us have worked on portions of the new site. In doing
so, we battled with Vignette, the content management system the university
switched to some time ago. The goal was to create a flexible and easy mechanism
to alter content on the site; ironically, this piece of software has been
plagued with management and performance issues since it was chosen. With the
state of TritonLink and Blink as they were before the redesign, or the drop in
admissions to Sixth College as a result of switching off a dedicated site
(three systems already running on Vignette), the university should reconsider
use ing Vignette and choose a smart, open alternative.

Furthermore, this new design — regardless of said visual
appeal — does nothing to fix underlying issues with how the university manages
its Web sites: TritonLink still goes down at the beginning of every quarter and
needs to be “maintained” for seven hours each day. How can a core service be
inaccessible for more than one out of every four hours and fall over when it’s
most needed, but still be declared successful and reliable?

As a mix of current and former student technical staff
employed by the university (some, the designers to whom you falsely attribute
praise of the Web site), we respect the time and effort that have been put into
the site, some of our own included. However, we think that this effort has done
harm to the university. We call for a full discussion on whether this campus is
achieving the world-class information-technology initiatives it deserves.

— Joe Auricchio

Former Sixth College Webmaster, TritonSchedule Project

Chris Bennett

Former Library IT Staff Member, TritonSchedule Project

D.J. Capelis

Security Engineer, Administrative Computing and
Telecommunications

Rushi Chakrabarti

System Administrator,

Physics Department

Paul Knight

Former Library IT Staff Member

Jack Nguy

CSE Department Developer

Scott Perry

Former AI Lab System Administrator

Spencer Wohlers

Former Library IT Staff Member