I'd second the suggestions from Erin with regards establishing style guides and Ross's suggestion of peer review. While not quite directly about the issue you have, Paul Boag a UK web designer has spoken and blogged on how clear policies relying on quantitative measures can help establish clear policies and (perhaps!) take some of the emotion out of decision making - e.g. see http://boagworld.com/business-strategy/website-animal/ - perhaps a similar approach might help here as well.
Owen
Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
Email: [log in to unmask]
Telephone: 0121 288 6936
On 18 Apr 2014, at 15:15, Erin White <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Develop a brief content and design style guide, then have it approved by
> your leadership team and share it with your organization. (Easier
> said than done, I know.) Bonus points if you work with your (typically)
> print-focused communications person to develop this guide and get his/her
> buy-in on creating content for the web.
>
> A style guide sets expectations across the board and helps you when you
> need to play they heavy. As you need, you can e-mail folks with a link to
> the style guide, ask them to revise, and offer assistance or suggestions if
> they want.
>
> Folks are grumpy about this at first, but generally appreciate the overall
> strategy to make the website more consistent and professional-looking. It
> ain't the wild wild west anymore - our web content is both functional and
> part of an overall communications strategy, and we need to treat it
> accordingly.
>
> --
> Erin White
> Web Systems Librarian, VCU Libraries
> 804-827-3552 | [log in to unmask] | www.library.vcu.edu
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Pikas, Christina K. <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Laughing and feeling your pain... we have a communications person (that's
>> her job) who keeps using bold, italics, h1, in pink (yes pink), randomly in
>> pages... luckily she only does internal pages, and not external.
>>
>> You could schedule some writing for the web sessions, but I don't know
>> that it will help. You could remove any text formatting... In the end, you
>> probably should just do as I do: close the page, breathe deeply, get up and
>> take a walk, and get on with other things.
>>
>> Christina
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Simon LeFranc
>> Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2014 7:43 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: [CODE4LIB] distributed responsibility for web content
>>
>> My organization has recently adopted an enterprise Content Management
>> System. For the first time, staff across 8 divisions became web authors,
>> given responsibility for their division's web pages. Training on the
>> software, which has a WYSIWYG interface for editing, is available and with
>> practice, all are capable of mastering the basic tools. Some simple style
>> decisions were made for them, however, it is extremely difficult to get
>> these folks not to elaborate on or improvise new styles. Examples:
>>
>> making text red or another color in the belief that color will draw
>> readers' attention making text bold and/or italic and/or the size of a
>> war-is-declared headline (see 1); using images that are too small to be
>> effective adding a few more images that are too small to be effective
>> attempting to emphasize statements using ! or !! or !!!!! writing in a
>> too-informal tone ("Come on in outta the rain!") [We are a research
>> organization and museum.] feeling compelled to ornament pages with
>> clipart, curlicues, et al. centering everything
>> There is no one person in the organization with the time or authority to
>> act as editorial overseer. What are some techniques for ensuring that the
>> site maintains a clean, professional appearance?
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>>
