Write to Reply

FAQ

Who runs Write to Reply? @josswinn and @psychemedia set it up. It started as an exchange on Twitter and ended up here.
Why did you start Write to Reply? We saw the Digital Britain - Interim Report and thought people might like a way to respond to it in detail.
How do you select documents? We're interested in documents written for public review. These are often government reports that can be freely republished.
I have a document that I think should be available for comment. Can you help? Yes. We hope other people will get involved. Contact us, tell us what document you have in mind and we'll give you a site. Please play by the rules.
What are the rules? We're still making them up. Basically, don't ask to host documents that you don't have the right to republish. Unfortunately if authors don't want their document posted here, there's not much we can do about it except complain LOUDLY.
Do all the sites have to look the same? No. There's a choice of two themes. We use CommentPress on this site. You can also choose to use Commentariat, a theme used on the commendable Power of Information Taskforce Report. With CommentPress, readers can comment paragraph-by-paragraph. With Commentariat, readers comment on chunks/sections of text. It's your choice.
I've spotted an error in the formatting of a document. Oh dear. We do spend time trying to make sure the texts are copied over as accurately as possible. We don't remove any content from the texts in any way. When we can't accurately reproduce something from a document, such as a table or image, then we'll most likely take a screen shot of the document section and reproduce it in the corresponding part of the post. If you're working on a document here, you should do the same (and if you find a better solution, let us know how you did it). If you replace text by an image from the original PDF, please comment out the replaced text in case we find a way to lay it out appropriately in the future. Also, keep a record of any changes you have to make. Transparency is important. WordPress has in-built revision control, so that helps.
What about Copyright? Do we need to get permission to upload a document? Yes and No. Government documents are usually Crown Copyright and allow re-publishing. This is usually subject to the material being reproduced accurately and not in a misleading context along with appropriate acknowledgements. Many public documents are also available under a Creative Commons license. We don't want to get into a legal tangle. If you're thinking of republishing a document here, you should be very sure you have the right to do so.
Are you a bunch of radicals out to bring down the government? No. We just think that it should be easier for people to comment on public documents in detail. This is one way of doing it. There's another good example of it happening on the Power of Information Taskforce site. We really hope that the authors of the documents find it a convenient and effective way of getting detailed feedback.
Are documents open for comment forever? If there is a given consultation period for the document, we'll note it on the front page of the site. We imagine that the older a document gets, the fewer comments it will receive. Authors of the documents can choose to view the comments or subscribe to the RSS feed of the comments for as long as they choose.
How long did it take to get this site up and running? About two days from our first Twitter exchange to going live (evenings and lunchtimes). It's not difficult if you know how to use a WordPress blog. All the tools are freely available.
The site is a bit slow! Sorry. It's running on a resource limited host (currently funded by Eduserv - thank you!). We are looking at alternative hosting arrangements to provide more robust hosting.
How can we support you? see #12 :-)
I have a question/suggestion. Great! Contact us via Email or Twitter.

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