About the
GCC Web

Centralized Web Management vs.
Distributed Web Management

For Centralized Web Management:	I think it's fairly obvious what the professional standard of web management is on the Web now. If you go out on the Internet and look at a web site, you're going to find a consistent design for a company that needs to sell a product, and if there are other pages to go to within that company, you'll be able to tell because the design will be similar; the information will be coordinated; the navigation will make sense; the information will not be missing. That represents Centralized Web Management. Somebody, somewhere is managing that company's web presence. Somebody is coordinating the efforts of the pages so that they are not all created independently, obviously. They match; there is some representation of the information fitting together like a puzzle. And that makes it easier for the user.
For Distributed Web Management:	I would maintain that that's probably a very interesting business model, but probably not a good one for an educational institution. I also maintain that it probably derives from print publications, what a friend of mine, Michael Joyce, used to call the "Late, Great Age of Print." The Web is a different environment. And particularly in educational institutions, it is important to have many voices heard. We really want the people who care about the information to be the ones who maintain it and who touch it all the time. No longer are these documents self-contained. They go beyond our own departments, our own institutions, worldwide. Of course, you're going to lose graphical coherence, and navigation becomes more difficult. That's part of the richness of the environment. So we don't need to use a marketing model in our web development. In fact, it might be better if we didn't.
For Centralized Web Management:	Well, that all sounds very ideal, but the Web is an important marketing tool, and even educational institutions have a product that they need to brand. And part of branding a product is creating an identity for the producer of that product. The institution needs to be identified; it needs to have an identity. The "diversity" buzzword does not contribute to that unified identity of the institution, and it may be misplaced. I think that when you have separate web sites that have a completely different look and feel, it's hard to tell that those web sites are official. How can you tell that they represent the administration of that institution -- unless you are branding the product?
For Distributed Web Management:	Web pages not only represent the way an institution would like to appear, or way it hopes it appears. It actually is a representation of the way the institution really is. And, in fact, we are a mixed bag. That is, we have many voices on our campus. We are not a coherent and unified entity. And the best way... It seems to me that a college that is self-confident and knows its educational purpose is willing to have those differences appear on its web pages and through its web. It should see the voices of faculty. It should have the voices of staff. It should have the voices of students. We spend a lot of money in this district valuing diversity. And my question is... Web pages that are different, that are multi-voices, that have different graphical identities, are in fact a practical application of what it means to live in an environment in which there are differences.
For Centralized Web Management:	There appears to be a separation between the priority of the visions and the voices of a scattering of different people creating web pages, and the priority of the user on-line. In our case, the user is the student. And a student-focused web is going to have a coherent series of steps, of tools, of resources within the web site that the student finds easy to use so that he can find all of the information. And if there's a question, there's a single contact -- say, a "webmaster" contact instead of a person who's isolated in one office -- who can answer that question, responsibly.
For Distributed Web Management:	"Student centered" doesn't necessarily mean that the pages have to be rigid, controlled from the top, and organized and maintained with the vision of a single person. There is no reason -- in addition to valuing diversity -- there is no reason why we can't make a value that is important to us of coordination and cooperation. And those are very, very gentle kinds of standards and suggestions. I think that it is highly ironic that the terminology that's been used for web management -- [sarcastically] my favorite term, the "webmaster" -- is one that implies that this is a medium that is under the control of a single person. In fact, the whole philosophy of the Web is not that. It is, in fact, the collection of voices of lots of people.
For Centralized Web Management:	But in practice, the "gentle" coordination and cooperation among different departments, different webmasters, is only partial. And you still have a large percentage of web sites under the Distributed Management model that appear to have been created by students instead of the offical sources of the information being represented.
For Distributed Web Management:	One of the things that's important about the Web and its evolution is that it isn't ever finished. And part of the model for the institution is also that people learn. I don't know anybody who creates a web page, and has it done. There is a constant learning curve. There are people who look at what they've done and they say, "Oh my gosh, I could have done it much better." And I think that's a good educational value that we want to promote. And that I think people who look at our institution through the lens of its web pages -- or our web pages -- understand whether that institution is committed to learning and continuous growth, or whether it is merely trying to sell something that it may not actually be.
For Centralized Web Management:	That places a special demand on the user to discern between this special vision that an educational institution would have that's inconsistent with professional standards that are everywhere else on the Internet, where that same student may be shopping for other products.
For Distributed Web Management:	[sarcastically] Ah, the realm of marketing. It's great.
[The group of attendees is invited to contribute any point they wish to add to either side of the debate.]
Group Contributor 1:	Who's the one who knows the information content that needs to be published on the Web?
For Distributed Web Management:	In a Distributed Web Management philosophy, or a web that has that philosophy as its ground, in fact it is the person who knows the information who maintains the web pages. That is, you want the web page closest to the person who cares about the information. You don't want them to have to go through multiple steps to somebody who doesn't know what the information is or what the latest update is in order to maintain it.
Group Contributor 2:	Web pages, and the whole Internet, are something new. In the distributed model, you're going to have more diversity and more creativity, and more ideas coming through. In the centralized model, you have less innovation.
For Distributed Web Management:	Oh, he's trying to synthesize for us, isn't he?
Group Contributor 2:	It seemed to me in the early years of web development, it was good to have lots of different adventures out there, everyone coming up with a different idea of how the Web should look. Some of us came up with very good ideas that might never have occurred to the centralized web managers.
For Centralized Web Management:	Unfortunately, that diversity of ideas often represents a lower degree of experience and organization on-line.
[The debate period ends, and the group's discussion and reporting activity in response to this issue is initiated.] Write an additional rebuttal for either side Proceed to: More Commentary on Web Management Authority Return to: Introduction to Web Management Authority Danger in the Construction Zone Contents WebDev 2000 Contents