• The following users can request a personal blog. The requestor will be the administrator of the blog and assumes responsibilities as defined by the policies.
  • faculty
  • staff
  • students (in second round of rollout)

• The following groups can request blogs, with a designated administrator(s). Do we want an approval by the department head?
  • courses (may need multiple blogs per faculty)
  • departments (may need multiple ones for a department - its, helpdesk, academic computing)
  • wsa groups
  • special projects (reacredditation, business continuity)
  • research (psych labs, science labs)

• comments
  • spam filtering software will be installed using default configurations.
  • do they need to be vetted? - Our recommendation is to make this default
  • do we want to require comments only by authenticated users?

• alphabetical listing of blogs
  • do we want to list all blogs Our recommendation is not to do an alphabetical listing. I heard some reasons for it, especially security related. Can someone expand on it? – [Not doing an alphabetical listing of individual user blogs makes sense, but we might want to consider listing departmental and group blogs since they are “official” (this would parallel what we do for departmental websites – dp]
  • if so, do we need wording explaining they are not all official?

• service expectations
  • The University does not guarantee that it will provide ancillary software, such as databases and script languages, that authors may wish to use in their blogs.

• Violation of policies (reiteration)
  • when we find that any of these policies are being violated, we will contact the user to address the problem.
  • If the user does not agree, the site may be shut down and the problem will be reported to VP for Academic affairs if the user is a faculty member, VP for Finance and Administration if the user is a staff member or the Dean of the Students if the user is a student.

I feel that the following items are covered by computer usage policies, therefore not needed here. There is nothing specific to blogs in any of these and this level of restriction to a service will drive people away. – [I agree. I think the current policy addresses the potential issues of concern with blogs. Perhaps all we really need to do is add one or two examples of blogging to illustrate current policy (in the same way that the current policy use webpages and file sharing software as illustrations)–dp]

• Rights to the Postings
  • Harvard uses creative comons
  • Harvard says Harvard can use the postings
• the selling of online advertising space to non-University entities
  • many policies include this
• violation if linking to others
  • some say this (seems more than we want) A web page may be considered in violation of content policies if it contains links to pages that violate the policy
• include text re: not approved by university
  • some want the inclusion of a statement like “The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author(s). The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by…“

• archival
  • By using the blog service, authors grant Willamette University non-exclusive rights to archive blog content in any format.

• can not use the university logo
  • “You may not use the Amherst Trademarks without valid, written authorization from the College. Additionally, you may not use the Amherst Trademarks in any manner that (a) will likely cause confusion about the source of any product or service, (b) implies that the College sponsors, endorses, or is affiliated with any third-party activity, or © disparages or discredits the College or any of its officers or personnel. You may not register any domain names containing any Amherst Trademarks without the College’s prior written consent in each case.”