At 5:16 PM 1/17/96, Deron Treadwell wrote:
>This brings up an interesting question in my mind. UMaine has made it very
>clear to me that they don't want to be a part of my page, very similar to
>how BU treated Sean Pickett a while back.
 
I just wanted to add that I understand this feeling on the part of schools
and I think it makes sense.  Schools should only be a part of sites that
they themselves take responsibility for.  We may put up information that we
get from various sources including the schools themselves, but we are the
ones responsible for the content of the sites.  If the school gets involved
in any way, they have to take responsibility, yet how can they do so if
they are not the ones running the sites.
 
I had a discussion about this with Jim Seavey over the summer when he was
still SID at Merrimack and I was getting my site ready.  That was when I
decided to tag my site with the "unofficial" moniker.  Jim said that the
only site he would want to be termed "official" was one that he worked on
personally and was responsible for.  I agreed and thus added the word
"unofficial" to the site.
 
However, just because a site is "unofficial" doesn't mean it cannot serve
as a good resource.  We have seen this with many sites on the web already.
In fact, with the way this medium is taking off, it is not unusual for the
best or only sites concerning a particular topic to be "unofficial" as the
"official" people themselves gradually catch up.  Personally, I wouldn't
mind if someday Merrimack established its own hockey site and I'd be happy
to provide anything I could to help them.  But until that happens, I think
it is good that mine is out there for people to get information from.  That
is the way I think people should look at this.
 
BTW, I think that the schools are in a difficult situation.  We'd all like
to get a great reception from from our schools when we tell them what we're
doing.  But even if they just tell you "nice job", they could be seen as
giving implicit endorsement of the site.  And that opens a pretty big can
of worms.  I think we should not expect anything from the "official" people
and just do what we can and want to do, on our own, within any boundaries
that may exist.  It's worked pretty well so far.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
>> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System  <<
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