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Website Content Managers Group

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The video features a discussion among legal content managers from various organizations across the United States, focusing on the strategies and challenges of curating external resources for their websites. The participants introduce themselves and share how their respective groups handle linking to outside information, ranging from simple form links with brief descriptions to more integrated approaches that provide context before directing users elsewhere. A central theme is balancing the need to fill content gaps by referencing authoritative sources while avoiding overwhelming visitors with too many options or outdated information. Many speakers note that they prioritize internal writing for high-priority topics but rely on curation when dealing with federal laws, tools, or issues where recreating content would be redundant. Karen Heredia from Law Help New York provides a detailed overview of her organization's approach to distinguishing between full articles and link summaries. She explains that while nearly all their written content is developed internally, they frequently use curated links for specific subjects like housing assistance for people with HIV/AIDS or federal benefit programs. When deciding whether to write an article or create a summary linking out, the team considers factors such as reliability of the source, plain language accessibility, and URL stability. They generally avoid ad-funded sites, forums, and certain government websites that may change frequently without notice, preferring local legal aid partners when possible. For unavoidable links to unstable federal pages, they implement warning banners to alert users about potential changes or inaccuracies. Practical considerations like link rot, content volatility, and accessibility play significant roles in the group's decision-making process. The speakers discuss methods for verifying that external links remain active and up-to-date, including using tools like the Wayback Machine when original URLs break due to government redesigns. Accessibility best practices are also emphasized, such as embedding descriptive text within hyperlinks instead of generic phrases like "click here," ensuring screen readers can effectively navigate content. The group agrees on an 80/20 rule where they focus resources on common scenarios and link out for edge cases rather than creating exhaustive guides for every possible situation. Additionally, there is a nuanced conversation about PDFs; while often avoided due to difficulty in tracking updates, they are accepted when necessary if the source is trusted and clearly framed as detailed reference material. The session concludes with participants reflecting on key takeaways regarding content lifecycle management and future improvements. Several managers express interest in refining their curation processes by implementing regular review schedules based on subject matter expert input or contracting services to monitor external changes automatically. There is also a desire to right-size website content, potentially reducing clutter while maintaining comprehensive coverage of legal issues relevant to low-income individuals. The group plans to reconvene later in the summer to explore these topics further, with an emphasis on creating more structured and user-friendly resources that empower self-represented litigants without relying solely on external links or outdated materials.
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Hello all, welcome. Um, welcome to our legal content managers discussion group. That's always a bit of a mouthful. Um, while we are just getting underway. Oh, I was going to ask people to um Oh, let's put just a warm-up in the chat. Um so maybe into the chat um maybe where you are geographically and how the summer has been treating you so far sentence or so and then we're going to get underway in just a minute or two as people are joining us. Um summer has been hot. Yes. Um, yes, I'm in um mid coast Maine and it has been actually generally nice. Um, but was uh hot in the the east coast. Hot. Um, and then we'll actually do some um unless we get a huge group, which I can't imagine we we don't typically get enormous group, we'll do some verbal introductions in just a minute or two. Hello to all. I see um uh many familiar faces and one or two new ones. So very excited for both of those things. Um let us get underway with um uh some quick introduction. So our topic today is uh curation. So the idea that as you know content managers um often uh we are writing or working with authors to write content for our own websites but there's also the possibility of pulling in um links or andor descriptions and links or something like that to other articles. So either federal articles or other um articles from other partners in the state, local jurisdictions, things like that. Um so we are doing a deep dive on that today. Would love to hear from you and I'm going to um just do a bit of a roundroin. I will do what I've done before is I'll call on um somebody and then say who's on deck just because I'm doing it in the order that I can see people and that's not necessarily something that anybody else can see. Um, so if you could talk a little bit, um, so maybe just a your name, I'm also typing this in the chat. Um, what organization you're with, and how you do curation if you do, how you do curation if you do. Um, Karen, Pin is going to be um, talking in more depth today about what they're doing, but do you want to just kick us off with a little bit of a introduction while other people think about this? Yeah. Hi everyone. Good afternoon. I'm Karen Heredia. I am Law Help New York um Law Help New York's and Scale Justice uh content manager. Fun fact, it's my first official day. I've been working on um Law Help New York and other legal aids for a while now, but but uh today marks kind of the transition into me being full-time content management at um >> um yeah, so I'm excited to share a little bit. We've been working I've been working on this site for uh two years now on a part-time basis, but I'm very excited to kind of move full-time into this and kind of keep growing the content. Um, and I will be talking about our approach to curation, some of the things that we think about. Um, so I won't go into too much detail now, but I'm excited to talk to you all. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Um, so, oh, I forgot to say who was on deck. Um, Chenita, if I could impose upon you with Emily on deck to do her intro next. >> Uh, sure. I am Chenita Chinapple Mlullen with Illinois Legal Aid online. So, um, we will have form links as a a format type, um, or direct links to other sites and just have a little bit of information about the organization and the content and that's usually it. And within our content, um, we may provide specific links, but um, we try to incorporate, uh, or we try to include links, but explain a lot too because we figure people can just go to those links and and read. but we try and explain it differently uh so that there's extra context um that people can read if they needed it. >> Fantastic. Thank you so much. Emily with Shelly on deck. >> Hi, my name's Emily Ouija and I'm with Wisconsin Law Help. I just joined in July as a contractor for about four months uh to uh try to get uh some more content on the on the site and also in regards to curation. Um just hoping to to work a little bit on a content life cycle process and um and look at that. So nice to meet you all. >> Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming. Uh fantastic. Shelly with uh I forgive me. Uh Angel. Angel. It's Angel right on deck. >> Angel. >> Angel. Sorry about that. I know you corrected me before. >> Uh Shel. I'm Shelley Reed, manager of LSNAP, and I'm not sure I completely understand the curation aspect, so I'm not sure if I do it. So, look forward to more discussion. >> Well, we'll find out. Great. Uh, Angel uh with uh Jay on. >> Uh yeah, Angel um with Piscal Services in Asheville, North Carolina. Um we really haven't done any much curation in the past at all. I'm just really starting to with with actually putting together some materials for our website this in the past year. So, what little we have done has been my own research that we then have um our legal experts review and and give the thumbs up on sources and then some of it is um just community partners that we work with closely. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Um Jay with Brea on deck. >> Hi. Uh my name is Jay Collier. I'm with 603 Legal Aid in New Hampshire. And um our content experts, subject experts include links to external sources for further information, but have all of the core information within the content itself. >> Great. Uh Bria with Martha on deck. Bri, am I saying that correctly? >> I'm Bria. Yes. I wasn't I heard Bria before, too. Um, and then I was when J and I was like, "Okay, great." So, yes, I'm with Lakes Shore Legal Aid. Um, nice to meet everyone. Thank you so much for having me. Um, I um I curate our um identity site and then we channel um a lot of the uh viewers to Michigan Legal Help, which is our um basic legal information portal. So we we most of our effort aims at being strategic and not and limiting the information we put on there to like activities and identity related information. We're also under um in the process of of a big redesign. So our current website is just kind of like hang hanging in there until we can um finish the redesign. So thank you. >> Fantastic. Oh, welcome. Exciting to have you. Um, fantastic. Um, Martha with Betsy on deck. >> Sure. Um, well, I'm Martha Beard Duncan, managing attorney for Texas Law Help. And curation is an interesting question. Um, although virtually all of the 1.2 two million some odd words we have on our website is uh developed internally. You know most of it to be helpful does refer to external resources as well you know with an explanation of what that is. Uh we have we prioritize other legal aids uh law library stuff that's actually going to be useful for our visitors. uh but because we have so much stuff you know I'm actually looking if anything to pair down to make it more structured uh especially in the day of AI search I think that maybe we should take a less is more approach so interested in what other people have to say >> fantastic great um Betsy and then we'll take anybody I haven't mentioned because I think that's everybody >> good afternoon I'm with uh South Carolina Legal Services and Hello Shelly and I am the um director of private attorney and uh community engagement and another hat I wear is director of u I oversee communications and marketing which includes somewhat our website although we have a web master um who wasn't able to join us but uh what the question is I came in five minutes late from another meeting. >> Yes. So we're talking about curation. So not necessarily uh information you have uh you've written for your website but the places in which you link out to other people's information. >> Yes. And that is a huge struggle for us and one reason I started wanted to start joining these meetings is so our law help page and and we also someone said they're limping along until they can get a new website. Uh we're we're there. We're limping as well. And um so our law help page, the web um master and I have worked on it for a couple of years. We had some enormous I want to say over 4,000 resources on there that ranged everything from how to apply for free lunch for your kids to you know to true legal issues. And so really trying to get have a meeting of the minds as to what do we want on this website? What makes sense? What will people be coming to our website for? If they want free lunch for their kids, are they going to come to us or are they going to go to the Department of Education or somewhere like that, you know? So, really narrowing it down so that people aren't they're just overwhelmed and leave the website because there's just so much clutter there. So, that's what and most of those resources we're linking out to. Some of them are our own, but a ton of them we're linking out to other organizations, agencies, um you know, things like that. >> Great. Fantastic. >> All right. Is there anybody else who hasn't um said a little bit about themselves? >> Hi. Yeah, I'm Elana. Um I joined a little bit late as well. I'm Elana um from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. she, her, and um we as far as external links on our website um primarily we have them as just a list of referrals for different types of um issues, but we are developing a new page for um external mostly external resources uh related to disaster. Um so that's what I'm hoping to um get a little of inspiration for today. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Anybody else who hasn't uh introduced themselves? >> I can I can uh I don't think I've uh I haven't gone. Laura, just hi, I'm Jane Rabbitera with uh the legal services corporation um with our TIG program. Um I'm not really in charge of content curation per se, but uh al I work with a lot of grantees who are doing that and building new websites. So, um I was curious to to kind of listen and learn so I can um share tips and and best practices with uh with other folks who are who are going through this. So, >> welcome. Oh, and I see Phil. >> Yeah, I'm Phil Story with the Virginia Poverty Law Center. um he him I um mostly am responsible for our specialized um eviction defense center to help people who are um are fighting potential eviction. Um and we don't mo most of that content almost all that content is created internally, but we do link out to some useful resources. Um, but I haven't um that hasn't been our focus, but I've been um sort of looped in with the Virginia Law um in ter as a just as a subject matter expert with the Virginia Law Help um site. And so I'm I'm just kind of interested in hearing um the approaches. >> Fantastic. And last but not least, I think I saw that Lisa just joined us. Um Lisa, we're just doing quick introductions and talking about how you um use curated resources on your website if you do so um linking out to other um other sites other and not just writing content. Hi, I'm here mostly as an observer because um my role with regard to content curation has changed, but I'm very active with our state bars access to justice committee and the self-represented litigant committee. So, I just wanted to check in. I may not be able to stay for the whole session. I'm sorry I was running a little late. I had something else to attend to. I wanted to just get a sense of what the um tenor of the discussion is because I work with those who do exactly that who curate content >> in that capacity you know at the state bar work. >> Fantastic. Welcome. >> Thanks for holding this session. >> Of course. Um great. And for those of you um who are not familiar with this group, this is indeed a monthly um discussion group. So, we'd love to have uh you not just today for this great um uh bit of a talk that Karen's going to do and then we'll um break up into some small groups um not only for today but for future every third Thursday. Fantastic. So, that was a little bit of a preamble to let Karen get ready to uh to talk. So Karen's going to talk just a little bit about how they think about this in um with Lawel New York um where they do a lot of the site is um made up of um links to other resources and they've given a reasonable amount of thought. Um she made sure to tell me in advance they don't have all the answers um but they have they have some questions at least. >> Yes. Thank you Laura. Um and thanks everyone for sharing. I think that there is um there's certain points that I will also be kind of talking about that some people have mentioned. Um and so yeah, a little bit about LA help New York. Um you know, we help New Yorkers learn more about different legal rights and options on a bunch of topics. Um if you look through our site, I mean we have all the topics basically. Whether how in detail um those topics are covered is another story. It's an ongoing process. Um, but basically we we have we use link summaries now for a while as a way to definitely fill in gaps. Um, and it's a mix of whenever a partner organization has something, we we go through a process to see whether it's the right fit for us to add it onto the site. So, I put together just some slides just to help more than anything help me organize. Um, so I don't just go on about curation indefinitely. Um, let me share my screen. >> Oh, uh, Laura, can you give me access to screen sharing? >> Uh, yes, >> I think taking care of it. >> Okay. For some reason, um, Zoom is not allowing co-hosts to give other people access. So, we'll get it straightened out. >> If not, it's okay. Um, >> oh, no, we can absolutely do it. So, give Kai just a second. >> Oh, okay. Great. >> All right. You uh you should be good now. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah, of course. So, um, so basically on law help and I tried to put some numbers behind this because Laura mentioned that, you know, we have a lot of link summaries on the site. I'm actually at this moment not entirely sure what the balance is for us. um we have nearly 600 um resource pages but on the back end at least we at this moment don't differentiate between what I call like full articles detailed articles versus link summaries. So this terminology of like full articles versus link summaries is our own internal like labeling. Um, and for us it's mainly like we talk about it this way because full detailed articles, they are longer articles. They are like basically a one-stop shop, right? They help with the process from start to finish. We want all of the reader questions that we are trying to answered in this article. um you know we call them guides interchangeably like they are meant to be um a full article that um covers the questions that we're trying to cover. Um these are usually written or at least co-created between Lawel New York and partner organizations. Um, so these full detailed articles, they obviously just require a lot of time, a lot more um, uh, time with both writing and reviewing with a subject matter expert. Um, and so we we define what articles we want to write full full or detailed articles for um, through a few different ways. I mean, sometimes it is through either a grant or just having partner capacity. Um, other times it's, you know, having just subject matter experts on staff, um, or, uh, potentially turning what is maybe a dense legal document into a more plain language translation, uh, plain language translation of that article. Um, and so the full detailed articles on our site, um, I can just give a quick example. Um so for example, how do I share this screen now? >> Um can you see this screen article? >> Um and so these are all just uh uh a full article. So someone coming here would know how to prepare defenses for an eviction case. Um, we have ones on voting and so it includes a full like basically everything that we would like someone to know before they go to vote or what they need to do to vote. Um, and there's others for uh this is now in my way. Uh, child legal care plans. And so all of these were developed with uh different organizations, different lawyers and subject matter experts. Um, on the other hand, link summaries. These are shorter summaries and the main purpose of these articles are to link out to external resources. And I'll talk next about what um criteria we look for whenever we are preparing to link to something else. Um, and I'll just show a quick example of something like housing help for people living with HIV or AIDS in NYC. um we go a little bit into what these programs are, but ultimately um the the goal is to send people to these websites um or uh in some cases partners have developed guides uh and so we link to that um and I'll talk a little bit more about what we include for these link summaries, but so when we're deciding between linking versus writing, Um well we link when I mean we can only link if something exists. Um but something existing is not like you know the bare minimum. What we really are looking for is a reliable plain language guide um from an authoritative stable source which I'll go into that. Um sometimes federal national law that doesn't vary by state. There's already materials that exist on that. So, it's an easy um thing with the caveat for recent recent things. Um or it's a tool, so something that we wouldn't recreate anyway. Um and so we're linking out to that. Um we are writing when certainly no content exists and it's a high priority issue or question. um when we want to have more control over the update cycle and have the capacity to be reviewing and updating content ourselves um or like I mentioned when there is existing content but it's either written for lawyers it's just not plain language so it needs to undergo some sort of um transformation in order for it to be um plain language and accessible and for all of these I would say that we're still following the 8020 rule. So, we're focusing on the 80% um or most common scenarios and for any edge cases, that's where we are briefly mentioning them or linking out for those edge cases. But I would say that um every article is addressing a common scenario and if there are um less common things within that topic, then we link out um for those So when we either get a external source recommended to us or we're looking for them, there's a few things that um we are aiming for to make sure that this source is linkw worthy. One is that it's reliable. It's coming from a reliable source. Um whether that's a court, government agency, another nonprofit. Um, we're definitely not linking to any like adfunded sites, any forums, any for-profit law firms. Those are all automatically off the table. Um, the main thing I would say with reliable source, I mean, even within this list of a court or a government agency website or a a nonprofit, um, we still do have a preference. You know, I think a lot of the time we're definitely um especially as a New York site, I think right now we're we're really monitoring um federal government changes and as a informal practice, we are um trying to whenever possible link to New York government sites um or nonprofits, you know, legal aid organizations since government agency um government websites in general are a bit infl flux. Um, and so that's reliable sources. Plain language, um, is one of the bigger priorities here on this list, or if the biggest, um, we want something that's written for the public. This means grade eight reading level or below. Uh, ideally jargon free or at least is trying to define jargon or be accessible. Um, and we are always framing this as, you know, users are usually reading these articles under stress. They're worried. So, we try to make sure things are scannable at least um and will be useful obviously to someone who's looking for for a clear answer. And then stable uh pages by an organization that will likely keep the page up. um it's likely to be updated or reviewed or the URL is unlikely to change. This is by far the one where we have the least amount of control. Um I think sometimes we know um if an organization if a partner organization is maybe going to go through a new redesign um New York court's website recently changed all of its URLs. So that was, you know, a big thing that we just had to be aware of of when the timing was for that to happen. Um, and so this one's like a little bit more hard to predict, but occasionally we do, especially now with federal government websites just changing. Um, we prioritize those less. Um, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. Any questions uh before I move on? I mean, we'll keep talking about this, but okay. Um, so for every link summary, so just because it's a link summary, um, it doesn't it doesn't mean we just kind of like copy and paste over the material from that external resource. Um, so we're always assuming every page needs to orient readers, especially um, since readers are often arriving via search. So every article, including link summaries, we like to have them, you know, stand on their own. And so each link summary, even if it's like a super short um writeup, what we want to do is have the problem be very clear on what we're trying to address. So that means useful title and intro sentence that um just jumps right into what what the issue is. Um and then who made the external resource. So in order to be credible and trustworthy, just being upfront about where we are sending someone. um and expectations for what happens when they click just because um you know if they're getting a PDF they should know that or a video etc. Um, and this can sometimes I mean I think link summaries can this can be three sentences. Sometimes we do a bit more. It really depends on the topic. And also sometimes we find a external resource that is really good maybe in some aspects but like you know still you kind of want to navigate to a particular section. And so with every external resource, we again are putting ourselves in the shoes of our readers to try to give as much direction without overwhelm um in order to once they get to that page where they should go or what they should do. So, we also do try I mean I occasionally we'll just add a bit more context or I'll do a plain language translation of something um so at least there's some framing and context setting on our site before readers click into the external resource. Um, and then some things to watch out for, things that come have come up for us or that we're constantly thinking about. Um, link rot can be an issue. We definitely need to verify live links regularly. Um, our current um, uh, content dashboard in in Drupal allows for this, but I saw that I think Jay, you shared some a tool in the chat. Um, and so we we need to do these checks pretty regularly um so that we can find any dead links uh on our site. Um, usually that process is pretty straightforward. It, you know, doesn't really take me a long time to hunt down new links and things like that and just replace them. Um, but you know, you do need to stay on top of news and current events. we're, you know, feeling very much like trying to track all the federal changes and how that affects our articles is is a big ongoing thing. Um, and then for all of our articles, we have a last review date, which for our full articles is a bit easier to stay on top of because, you know, we don't change that last review date unless there was a full review of that article. For link summaries, it's just a little harder. Not every source organization will have a last review date and sometimes even those aren't the most trustworthy. So, it's it's a bit of a using best judgment to figure out um what a review process looks like for link summaries. Um and and law help New York is actually also going through a redesign um like so many of you. So, I think some of these things um we we're working to address right now. Um but in general I'm always tagging or you know flagging linked resources um with like volatility ris risk. So um I definitely worry about some articles more than others and just track that for myself in um in our spreadsheet for article tracker. And then uh I would also say one thing I'm always aware of is just be aware of link bloat. um we do get uh partner organizations or just like resources that are forwarded to us. Um and I think for us the first thing is it has to be a legal issue of some kind. Um I think we've gotten a few different like I mean I think we have we expanded our education section recently. Um but every now and then there's a few things where we're like we just don't this isn't like immediately related to the law. Um and so we will pass over those. Um but I think keeping in mind just the 8020 rule of just focusing on the most common scenarios also helps us cuz sometimes we'll get you know a PDF uh about something that's like very very detailed but you know not a lot of people need it. And so we either try to find a way to include that topic on our site if we don't have it already. Um or or we do just sometimes pass on external links if it means just not um uh you know adding more to a topic that might already be very full. Anyway, um and yeah, I think that's that's my overview. Um, I don't know if anyone has any questions from that or anything else you want me to dive deeper on. Oh, and okay, sorry, I remembered one other thing I was going to say. Um, is I mentioned a little bit about the federal government um changes and things like that. So uh we um we've been do so we have we went through a lot of the articles that were linking to US government websites um and tried to whenever possible find different links. Um, but for the places where it just wasn't really possible to do that, what we now have is this like yellow alert at the top, um, that is basically warning people that this US government website might be outdated or wrong. Um, you know, I think that this is something that is being talked about more, but I would say definitely in my work with Law Help New York, um, we've been trying to be a bit more realistic in our language and, um, you know, in the ways that we can to just name the things that are happening, um, that are affecting, you know, benefits and different um, rights. that people have. And so, uh, you know, we workshop this message. And so this now appears on any page that links out to a like us.gov, um, website. Um, and then we also use alerts when things are changing, uh, or ongoing changes like specific to, for example, TPS. Um, and so this is a link summary. It's a bit on the longer side because we include um some this long list of countries, but if you click on this, it goes to a government website. Um and so that's another way that we also with linking to external langu um when it's unavoidable and when it's something like what is happening currently um trying to just name things and and I would say that that in general for our content approach is sometimes that it is just like these are for like benefits you know these are complicated processes and they're meant to be complicated to keep people from applying like we're getting a bit more um real with things. And I think with link summaries, like some of what I mentioned just about also, even if a a resource exists already, still giving it some context um or helping people along when we can by just providing um you know, reliable information. Um and I work a lot with different lawyers and subject matter experts to just get that right. Um, but I think it's it's part of the more for me like the human side or the even like psychology side on how um people retain info and why plain language is so important and um yeah, helping people helping folks navigate this on their own. >> Thank you so much Karen. Um definitely interested in questions. I have questions of my of my own. Um, are there particular topics that are there's good that you found that there to be good national resources are that that maybe aren't so much influx that you would like point out to people's attention of people who haven't really considered necessarily uh linking to national sources before? Um, off the top of my head, I know that like consumer law had a lot of different like national um, resources that were always very helpful. I mean, I think even up until a couple months ago were reliable things and now it's just I don't know. I think that that's why we put up that banner, you know, because I think we we thought like, well, some of this is plain language, like certainly all the like credit um uh credit bureau stuff and the um consumer lawsuits and debt collectors, like there was a lot of really good existing language um or resources or booklets on it. Um and yeah and so CFPB the feds are trying to end it. So it's I think right now a little bit if I were linking to that I think it would be with the caveat that like you know it's under danger and that's why we have the um the the alert at the top for for things like that. And sometimes we add like a message at the bottom of the article to say like, you know, call your representatives, call, you know, we include links on things like that just because it's, you know, if it's going away, it's for a reason and we want to >> Martha has a great tip that she put in the chat. Martha, are are you willing to unmute and just share that? >> Sure. Um, yeah, we've obviously encountered the same thing in Texas and we're under like different levels of scrutiny, too. So, I wish we could use exactly the language you use about federal websites, but what we do, like if the website has moved, it's a source that's valuable to our users and it's still good law, uh, we'll just go to the wayback machine, so the archive, and grab the link from there. Um, and sometimes we'll also create PDF versions of the source so that we'll have it on file. And if sometimes we even add it like as a link that's like saved within the back end of our website so it's accessible that way too. So if it's good information, there are workarounds, but you do have to stay on top of it. But at least Wayback Machine for now isn't going to go away. We also sometimes link to sources on the Cornell Legal Information Institute website if it's a federal law or regulation because some of those links had a nasty habit of breaking over the past couple years. >> Yeah. >> And you have to know the URL to use the Wayback Machine and if it's been taken down, >> you have to navigate through. >> Yeah. I mean, this is like if we had the URL to begin with in an article and the link broke. So that's the context in which we use way back. >> Fantastic. Other questions for Karen or other I know we have a lot of people with who've done a lot of thinking on this topic. Other kind of things to share or um tips in this area. Fantastic. What we're going to do next is um a couple discussion groups ago um uh people really enjoyed some small group discussions. Um so we're going to do that um uh again for so maybe about three people in a group um with um uh about 10 minutes to discuss um so just to meet each other and to discuss um sorry I'm just seeing what's going into the uh into the chat uh if there are questions definitely want to give get questions to to Karen um so um about 10 minutes to talk through with your peer to meet your peers obviously which is a big goal of this group. Um and then to talk through what this it feels like this means to you um what it is that you are thinking about curating um what it um what you're thinking you're taking from this and what you might do. So I am going to break us out um if you So we are back. Uh thank you. So I'm curious as to whether there were any um kind of next steps that people are willing to share. So anything that seemed compelling that people want to try do think about. >> Um I I'll just jump in and say uh Karen gave me a great tip. Um I was talking about um trying to flag certain articles or content for when they should be reviewed. And Karen was saying that if you have a subject matter expert working on it, it's a good thing to ask them ahead of time like how often do you think this content should be reviewed? So, thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Fantastic. I'll just u mention that um uh Shannita chaired actually a Texas law help practice um if they're still doing this of when they do the link uh description of actually embedding quotes um in the um uh in the description. So kind of like here's an important part, here's another important part. Um Martha, is that still something you do? Um, well, I mean, every like we had a major redesign that went live in 2021 and so like every article has like a subhead on it says this article is about blah blah blah and then there's a smaller introduction over the actual FAQ part of it. So, you know, maybe Janita, is that what you're referring to? Yeah, I think so. or and yeah this was previous uh there were times where it was just um like a link and then in quotes you know from there but that might have been prior >> I mean sometime sometimes we'll do that just but yeah context is always helpful and of course that's just also a readability practice is >> have descriptive hyperlinks instead of just plopping a link there right >> absolutely oh yeah that's definitely worth saying um that if you're linking out. Uh, very important to have. I just I actually Martha, you wanted to Sorry, I won't steal your thunder. Do you want to just say what the accessibility practice there is? Uh, for when you're linking out. >> Oh, yeah. Just I think everybody may know at least a little about it, but whenever you're linking to an external source, never say click here because obviously a screen reader is going to not is will pick up click here and that will be utterly useless to the person using the screen reader. So explain what you're linking to like embed it in the hyperlink. >> Fantastic. Other things that people are interested in thinking about moving forward with are taking away. I would add one um in addition to a link going bad because um content's been taken down um monitoring when cont that external content has changed. One of our concerns was with state laws and rules and regulations the con the link stays live but the content changes. So, we've contracted with a company that takes our articles, finds the um external page that has that information, and lets us know when that's changed. So, it prompts a new review. >> Great. Um, actually, I had one question left on my list for Karen. Let me just ask this or other people. Um, and then we will wrap. Um, so Karen, um, I think one of the things you mentioned as you mentioned, um, linking out was linking to PDFs. Um, and I just happen to know that Karen has strong personal feelings about PDFs. Um, how do you balance that? How do you decide is that one of the things that you like might be part of the criteria in deciding whether a link is you're going to link to it? >> Yeah. Um, so I the reason why I don't like PDFs is that it's it's a lot harder to track changes or uh I mean we always download the PDF, upload it to our site, but uh it's you know it's more work to track down any new versions of that PDF, things like that. Um, so that's part of an informal I think process for us is that I whenever possible try to avoid PDFs. That said, I think a lot of partner organizations use them and so I feel a bit more when I feel better about it when I can track where it's coming from and as part of a regular review process, we know who owns that PDF and we have direct contacts that we can confirm. Um, and sorry, Laura, what was your question? Just PDFs in general. >> No, just how you how you thought about that. Um, as to Yeah. And Martha's just put in the chat, not a first resort for sure. >> Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, not a first resort, but much more trusted when it's from our partners where we can kind of go directly to the source. Um, I don't see as many like New York agencies really. I mean there's there are very long dense PDFs on certain topics. Um and I would say we really only link those and and this because that goes against our requirement for plain language to whatever we're linking towards. Um, but sometimes the PDF that explains into detail, you know, how to apply for benefits or how to appeal a decision, um, we'll add it even if it's like 25 pages, you know, or something because if if we frame it as like if you want a detailed guide for X thing, you know, download this. Um, so I think the same kind of things apply for us where it's just looking at it in the context of that specific article um, and what our goals are and how to help a user understand the PDF in that situation. >> Great. Um, thank you so much Karen um, for sharing that and for sharing uh, previously. Um, so as a grand wrapup, I would love if everybody would type in the chat just one thing they're taking away today. Um, it's always useful for me to know um what you're taking away because it helps me know what you are, you know, might get away from future things and what we should program. Um, I'm going to just pause for 10 seconds to let you think and perhaps start typing. And do please join us. I'm going to make you type while I'm talking. Um for our so we are continuing to meet through the summer. Um so our next um session will be the third week of August. Uh and I'm thinking that will probably be there was a couple mentioned uh people mentioned today talking figuring out how to rightsize the number of articles like should there be fewer? Should there be more? Should you compact them a bunch together? Should you should they be more but shorter? Um ways to think about that. Um I got a thumbs up from Betsy. Um and I know both Martha and uh Januda mentioned that. So fantastic. Um, great. Um, please continue to put your one takeaway into the chat. Um, and I will hopefully see you again uh in August or September or some session soon. Thanks Karen and thanks everybody. >> Thank you.