Towards standard methods and metrics for evaluating IA

[Rashmi Sinha <rashmi AT rashmisinha.com>]

Thanks for the feedback Livia,

> "minor editorial changes" sounds a bit scary, I'd be afraid to
> submit. Maybe because I'm used to submitting stuff to magazines and seeing
> my articles getting chopped up by awful editors. Who knows, maybe others
> share the same fear.
> What kind of changes were you thinking? I don't believe we should make any
> alterations to the metrics people send. I am unsure what you meant by this,
> but if what you want is to normalize the submission by making them similar
> in structure/form, we could instead provide submission guidelines and/or
> even a template to be filled in. If so, then we could add another item
> before number 4 that would say: "All submissions should comply with AIfIA's
> Metric Submission Guidelines".

I have my doubts about this one as well. Here is the kind of change I was 
thinking of: We should not be needing to make changes as such, but it is 
possible that we would like to make some changes for easier readability. 
You can imagine that someone's instructions for a set of metrics are not 
very clear and we can suggest some changes. This does in any way mean we 
will be making changes to the proposed metrics themselves.

I think your suggestion above makes sense of having a statement like: ""All 
submissions should comply with AIfIA's Metric Submission Guidelines". I 
will make the changes.

> On item six, I would just change "may not" to "will not".

Ok.

> Items seven and eight could be just one item, hosting. Since this agreement
> is for submissions, this will also depend on how the submissions should be
> sent. If submissions will be sent through email, how do we know if they want
> to host it or if we can? The agreement needs to specify exactly what's going
> to happen, not the possibilities.

This and other details will need to be ironed out as we understand better 
how the project will work. I will make a note about this on the wiki.

> The reason why this works on TIA because we ALWAYS email the author before
> translating asking two things: if they authorize the translation (under
> TIA's terms of agreement) and saying that we will host the translation on
> the language pages. Should an author express that they would rather have the
> translations on their web site, then we do that (example: Garrett's diagram
> at jjg.net/ai )

We will work on this in the "Call for contributions" document, and have the 
changes reflect in this agreement document as well.

> If the submissions are going to be uploaded through AIfIA's site, then we
> could just add a form field where the person chooses this (might make more
> sense since there are the CC choices to make as you explained).

Yes. But we still need to make a final decision about how materials will be 
uploaded. I am still looking into that. Lets talk about this issue in more 
depth during the IM meeting.

> Item 10 is a bit nebulous -- it's their own so it's an obvious "right". It's
> AIfIA who is "allowed" to publish the metrics on its site (item 7). I'd
> remove this one. Unless, of course, you mean something else by "final
> metrics". By the way what do you mean by final metrics? I suppose you meant
> the metrics after they have suffered "minor editorial changes" ;) So I guess
> we go back to that issue before we settle this one.

Let me think about this one...

> Last but not least, this agreement doesn't apply if the person is not
> submitting their own work. That's what I said before - people might want to
> participate by suggesting things they like and use, not necessarily their
> own work. Even just links :)

Well, people can suggest anything they want to by providing links in the 
comments. We need to think about the material that is solicited and 
officially submitted through AIfIA. For anything else, AIfIA is not 
responsible. It is possible that someone's materials (say X) are suggested 
by a third person. At that point if X decides to submit the materials to 
AIfIA for housing on the AIfIA site, then they have to say yes to this 
agreement. Its only at that point that any AIfIA agreements apply.

Does this logic make sense?

-rashmi




> Cheers,
>
> Livia Labate
> http://livlab.com | liv AT livlab.com
>
> The Translation of Information Architecture Project
> http://aifia.org/translations/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rashmi Sinha" <rashmi AT rashmisinha.com>
> To: <aifia-metrics AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 9:54 PM
> Subject: [Aifia-metrics] first pass at agreement
>
>
> I have posted a first pass at a document describing the agreement between
> the metric contributor and AIfIA. It deals with copyright issues as well.
>
> I took the AIfIA translation project's agreement between authors and AIfIA
> as a starting point and made alterations and additions as needed.
>
> Comments would be welcome, especially if you are familiar with such issues.
>
> http://www.aifia.org/projects/wiki/index.php?page=metricsAgreement
>
> -Rashmi
>
>
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