Special annotations - for links to articles based on responses, summaries of correspondence, or admin notes about alaveteli HOT 28 OPEN

Request specific tags eg.

news_article:http://www.example.com
cited_at:http://www.example.com

could be used, and they could prompt the display of something looking like an annotation.

See also #2302 Expose per-request tags publicly and enable searching and browsing using such tags

from alaveteli.

A WhatDoTheyKnow volunteer has requested the ability to add a publicly anonymous admin annotation - this could be used in cases when dealing with requests made by vexatious users for example.

Internally there would still be a record of which admin added the annotation.

from alaveteli.

It might be desirable to differentiate between a normal admin annotation; and one we want to draw lots of attention to and stick at the top of a request thread or is that getting too complex with too many options?

from alaveteli.

As well as a background colour - the WDTK logo could be shown on the top right of admin annotations?

from alaveteli.

It would aid transparency of reasons for takedowns if an explanation could be given to visitors to request threads which have been taken down.

One possible option might be to make high prominence administrator annotations visible on such hidden request thread pages?

from alaveteli.

A user today has asked us to put an annotation at the top of a request; to help those reading the request; it would have been useful to have had this feature.

The annotation in question is
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/reports_concerning_hs_at_leisure#comment-27953

from alaveteli.

Will be looked at in #1523

from alaveteli.

Related to this could be other types of special annotations eg.

• Annotations linking to articles based on the response
• Annotations linking to places material released has been reused

from alaveteli.

Classifying special types of annotations eg. links to articles or other outcomes from requests could be useful for research on the impact of Alaveteli sites.

from alaveteli.

Another common type of annotation is a link from one request to another.

We might want to handle those in a special way too.

from alaveteli.

Not specially flagging links from requests to articles etc. based on them means we're missing out on possible information on the impact of sites, and missing the opportunity to point readers to requests of interest eg. via a page showing requests which have recently been cited, or highlighting requests with recent citations on user/body pages.

from alaveteli.

Special annotations could be used to highlight advice to requesters from the team running the site.

from alaveteli.

Further possible special annotation/link types:

• "drill down", to link from one request to a further request for more details in-light of the response.
• "Request answered at..." to link from a request to another request where the response has been provided. This could be a duplicate request, it could be a prior request on the same subject, or it could be a public body has responded to a few requests in one go on one thread and not responded to others.

from alaveteli.

Consider this kind of Tweet:

#DidYouKnow despite closing to passengers in 1994, Aldwych Station still receives an occasional, non-public, service?
Find out more in this #FOI from @tfl: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/aldwych_movements_and_future#incoming-1597585
https://twitter.com/WhatDoTheyKnow/status/1295840628874588160

The WhatDoTheyKnow request page isn't a very friendly landing place for those wanting to find out more. If such pointers could be to a prominent annotation introducing the request and its response that might be better. (Annotations can already be used in this way, but it's a bit of a surprise to be linked to an annotation part way down a page for an introduction / summary / "article").

from alaveteli.

The WhatDoTheyKnow request page isn't a very friendly landing place for those wanting to find out more. If such pointers could be to a prominent annotation introducing the request and its response that might be better. (Annotations can already be used in this way, but it's a bit of a surprise to be linked to an annotation part way down a page for an introduction / summary / "article").

Agreed (this tweet was my fault).

It'd be good to have a feature that allowed us to highlight prominent parts of requests, since this would make social sharing a bit more "intuitive", both for admins of Alaveteli-powered sites, and for users who wish to draw particular attention to a part of their reply (think along the lines of a comment appearing in a newspaper, where an excerpt is drawn out of the main body).

from alaveteli.

If we could flag up admin annotations providing advice and list them on the site that would be a good starting point for using the existing annotation system as a kind of FOI advice forum.

Perhaps annotations from others could be flagged FOI advice too - maybe if they were by trusted users.

This might help promulgate advice provided by admins and others more widely.

from alaveteli.

We've done a bit of tagging of requests with ICO decision references. This would be good to expose #2302 and make more visible.

from alaveteli.

The content of any prominent admin banner on a request should populate <meta property="og:description”> so that the admin banner content is presented in auto-generated snippets on search engines and elsewhere.

from alaveteli.

I'm a bit lost reading through the comments in the request, but I tried to have a play around with the idea in the original issue comment. Do you mean something like the pic attached? (when enabled for a given annotation the background colour is changed, and username replaced with either "Administrator" or the installation name)

At the top of the request it adds something like:

Feel free to say if I missed the point though 😅

from alaveteli.

I tried to have a play around with the idea in the original issue… Do you mean something like the pic attached?

I think this is a really great simple version (and I mean that in a very positive way!) of what is a bit of a wide-ranging issue. I'd make a couple of very minor tweaks, but I think you've hit the nail square on the head here.

I've been mulling the more generic case over for a while now and feel like I'm converging on an approach for how we'd implement it. I'll need some time to write these up in a coherent way. I'll try to work on this next Friday (2021-08-06), but we're quite busy at the moment. Hassle me if I haven't come back to this by the end of August 2021.

Once I've done that, we can figure out whether this specific use would be easy to implement in the general way, or if not, then I think we'd just want to put a little thought in to how we'd make the addition without a more generic framework so that we don't make a future migration difficult.

from alaveteli.

We may wish to add a prominent admin annotation to all, or a large set of, a user's requests, to make this easy features to allow admins to add such annotations in bulk may be useful. See also:

*Offer options to admin the site via bulk actions #5434

from alaveteli.

Consider also the ability to add a prominent admin annotation to a request based on the presence of a word or phrase in the correspondence, this kind of feature could link to:

*Publicly identify certain uses of the service as less than ideal #6254

from alaveteli.

Consider how a standard annotation/notice could perhaps be triggered by a request specific tag, or set of tags, in a case where the notice might be something like:

"WhatDoTheyKnow has received a request to remove material from this correspondence thread. As of the time of writing we have not removed any material".

One would want a tag, or tags, which only admins could add - which complicates #2302

Tags might be eg. takedown takedown_rejected

Such tagging could inform a transparency report (#2658).

from alaveteli.

Another common type of annotation is a link from one request to another.
We might want to handle those in a special way too.

More specifically we might want to specially handle links between requests for the same information at different times.

from alaveteli.

There may be standard annotations, or annotation snippets, which admins want to use on many threads.

eg.

• Specific example: " Enable admins to note when a "Notice of European data protection removal" has been received in relation to a request #4622
• A note saying that we recognise a request is poor quality / less than ideal but explaining why such correspondence gets published anyway.

from alaveteli.

Consider also the ability to add a prominent admin annotation to a request based on the presence of a word or phrase in the correspondence

There's quite a risk of false positives - showing notes on inappropriate requests if we go for keywords rather than the more specific tags.

There are pros and cons though - keyword based notes would be shown on large numbers of requests without needing manual/admin effort to tags those requests.

If we had a gambling warning would we show it on all requests to bodies which distribute lottery funding? If we had an alcohol warning would we want it to appear on requests about cleaning products? It's probably one to experiment with, and try keyword triggered notes first, and if we need a more nuanced system eg. keyword1 NOT keyword2 or keyword AND specific_body we could suggest those enhancements later if needed.

from alaveteli.

One of the proposed types of special annotation here is a summary of the correspondence.

We could go further, and have a one-sentence, or tweet sized summary.

One could imagine an interesting page compiled from such one sentence summaries, as well as them being helpful things to present at the top of a correspondence thread.

Example from one I was just looking at:

• "The RNLI does not invoice HM Coastguard for any operations." (details)

Only a fraction of threads would suit summarising in such a way, but it could be done for many.

from alaveteli.

The new "generalised notes" feature appears to be a big step towards the features described in this ticket.

from alaveteli.