Ideas/Suggestions for IrelandOFFLine Blackout page

Yoda

Hello, all.

I'm glad to see a draft of the blackout web page, but I'd like to see it a little bit more formal. When someone goes to my site, I don't want them to see "Yikes! Where's the site that was supposed to be here?"

I would rather see it start something like "In protest at overpriced slow metered internet access in Ireland etc etc, this site has been removed temporarily in support of The BLACKOUT protest organized by IrelandOffline."

I don't quite understand "Power removed by IrelandOffline", and I would like to see the IrelandOffline logo used.

In an attempt to be helpful in this matter, I've put up a draft at http://www.evertype.com/misc/blackout/blackout-me.html

ru1nzx has truncated this and put it at http://www.reactstudios.net

I would like to propose that editing of the Blackout draft be relegated to the Editing blackout.irelandoffline.org thread.

dahamsta

Hi Yoda,

Just a quick note to point out that the page at blackout.irelandoffline.org was only fired together as a draft and is by no means final. For that matter, we'd like to offer people as many alternatives as possible, so your draft and work on this is apprecated. When exactly the BLACKOUT actually goes ahead is yet to be finalised, but no matter when it is there's no doubt we won't be able to do it on our own, and the more help we can get from IrelandOffline members and of course non-members - including webmasters, designers, writers, etc - the better.

The informal attitude was my own personal way of doing things, the kind of thing I would put on my own sites, and I realise that without doubt there will be individuals and company's that will want a more formal statement explaining the situation. So your own draft, along with the drafts of anyone else who wishes to submit one (or many), will be considered, and I'd like to encourage people to try their hand. It should be pointed out though that they should follow a format in the style of the original.

And finally, I agree the logo should be there, and it would have been, but the IrelandOffline site wasn't available when I fired it together and so neither was the logo.

[EDIT: Bard, can you split this off into a new thread please?]

adam

DeVore

The blackout page doesnt seem to mention Eircom at all... I think it should give a brief statemement why the blackout has been effected.

Oh yeah... whose been nicking my ideas off the Open list ! :eek:



DeV.

Yoda

Dahamsta said
Just a quick note to point out that the page at blackout.irelandoffline.org was only fired together as a draft and is by no means final. For that matter, we'd like to offer people as many alternatives as possible, so your draft and work on this is apprecated.

I thought as much.

The informal attitude was my own personal way of doing things, the kind of thing I would put on my own sites, and I realise that without doubt there will be individuals and company's that will want a more formal statement explaining the situation. So your own draft, along with the drafts of anyone else who wishes to submit one (or many), will be considered, and I'd like to encourage people to try their hand. It should be pointed out though that they should follow a format in the style of the original.

Maybe we should craft several for people to choose from. I edited yours a bit for typographic reasons ("Thank you," not "Thank You,") and put it up with mine. See http://www.evertype.com/misc/blackout/blackout-formal.html and http://www.evertype.com/misc/blackout/blackout-informal.html

And finally, I agree the logo should be there, and it would have been, but the IrelandOffline site wasn't available when I fired it together and so neither was the logo.

Let's work on the text on this thread. Someone thought we should mention Eircom. Not a bad idea, but I couldn't think of a "nice" way of doing it right away.

Yoda

I was also thinking of doing some kind of pre-Blackout banner that I can use on my main page to warn people of the impending blackout. Think that's a good idea? It might encourage people to get on the bandwagon.

neverhappen

How about something slightly more wordy (but hopefully not too wordy). The 'anywhere else in Europe' stat I just made up, but something like that should be quotable.

Note also that all of the ideas written here are the position of the writer and not that of ireland offline.

(I presume this disclaimer should apply to this entire thread until actual text has been agreed - as most drafts are going to be saying "ireland offline says eircom are really bad...." etc)




This site has been temporarily removed in support of The BLACKOUT protest organized by IrelandOffline.

The withdrawal of this site is intended to draw attention to those who are responsible for the current unavailability of unmetered and broadband internet access in Ireland, resulting in Irish consumers paying more for slower access than anywhere else in Europe.

Primary responsibility for this situation rests with eircom, but the Irish government must also be held accountable as this is a regulated industry and they control the regulations.

For further information, and .... etc

chernobyl

Originally posted by Yoda
"Yikes! Where's the site that was supposed to be here?"

sounds like a Script Kiddy taking the pi$$.

dahamsta

Just a quick note because I spotted the word "wordy" (if you catch my drift). I have no objection to "wordy", but it should be pointed out that we need to avoid verbosity on this particular page. The message should be short and sweet, and we should be encouraging them to click through to the "support site", which will have more than enough information to enlighten, and hopefully enrage them.

That is all.

adam

hmmm

Didn't this originally start off as a boycott targetted specifically at eircom, not some generic "fed up with the state of the internet in Ireland"? If I was the suspicious type I'd say Eircom have spies who are deliberately batting away IOFFL iniatives by stealth (I'm joking I'm joking this isn't the x-files )

Yoda

Neverhappen provided some improved text, which I've implemented at http://www.evertype.com/misc/blackout/blackout-formal.html

Bard

Originally posted by Yoda
Neverhappen provided some improved text, which I've implemented at http://www.evertype.com/misc/blackout/blackout-formal.html

I like that one, but the "IrelandOffline" should link to the ".com" address, not the ".org" one.

seamus

I'm changing my site to this www.boards.ie/members/seamus pretty much for the foreseeable future. Btw, I'm not too HTML-savvy, so how do I change the color of the links(it's hard to see the blue)

pork99

Seamus

the standard and easiest way to change link colours is to add these attributes to the <body> tag thus;

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#3333FF" link="#FF3333" vlink="#990033" alink="#FFFF00">

link= is the standard link colour

vlink= is visited links colour

alink= is active link - colour which displays on mousedown

You can get fancier using Cascading Style Sheet selector classes but the above should keep you out of trouble for now

hope this is helpful

moist

Just a quicky to say that in the example pages listed above, the image at the top cover the
top few lines of the text below it in my browser (netscrape on FBSD)

Gotta remember the asthetics in these things...