Eagleionline Reborn
Eagleionline(Want to know how to see a particular author's "Real Name"? Check out the February 1 update, below.)
Welcome to Eagleionline Reborn, the new Eagleionline. As you can see from these pages, we have renovated our entire site. In making these many changes, we owe a great debt to our friends and colleagues at Boston College Law School: with their help, we believe that we have created an online environment that is more useful, safe and civil for all -- one that we hope will help make Boston College Law School an even better place to work and live in the years ahead. Here are some of the issues we've been working on:
- Anonymity. One of the most difficult issues we've faced involves the extent to which our community should protect those who feel the need to speak anonymously for fear of retribution. Our revised policy accommodates both the pro- and anti-anonymity camps to some extent. We have created a system in which each student chooses two names: one that is visible to the entire world (one's "anonymous name," or "handle") and one that is visible only members of Boston College Law School (one's "real name"). A student can choose a fanciful name for his or her anonymous name, or handle, but is obligated to reveal his or her real name to our community. Only members of our community will be able to see this second, real name. Thus, we call our new policy "anonymous to the world, non-anonymous to Boston College."
- "Members-Only" Section. Not every piece of information needs to be broadcast to the world. For this reason, we have created a members-only section on Eagleionline that is accessible only to members of the Boston College Law School community. After you register and login to the new site, you will see that we have moved our Outline Database and Course Evaluations features to this restricted section. Perhaps more importantly, though, we have created a completely internal message board for students. The content of this message board is not visible to the outside world, nor is it searchable by them; it is completely private. Members of our community can write anything on the board (a.k.a. students may start their own "threads"). The board can be used to discuss politics, to look for roommates, to sell stuff -- all completely privately.
- Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. In order to be as transparent as possible, we sat down and drafted Eagleionline's ground rules (a.k.a. our "Terms of Use"). We wanted to make sure that people realized that we do not tolerate, for example, libel on Eagleionline. In addition, we wanted to make sure that people knew that we, as site editors, do not necessarily endorse other peoples' viewpoints as expressed on the site. The flip side of this, of course, is that you as site users do take responsibility for the things you say online. Finally, in addition to the Terms of Use, we have published a comprehensive Privacy Policy. We believe that you should know how all websites, including ours, use your private data.
- Technical Stuff. In addition to enhancing our services and making our various policies more robust, we have added some fun and, we hope, useful technical features. Now, for example, it is very easy to email articles to friends, to print articles, and to write letters directly to article authors. However, these technical enhancements have come at the cost of some compatibility. We now encourage our users to view our site with Mozilla's Firefox, which you can download here.
These are just a few of the changes we've made. We hope that you enjoy them. Please continue to let us know--by email or in person--what you think of the site. Your encouragement and, most importantly, your criticism helps keep Eagleionline alive. And if you're a student at BC Law who is interested in joining our staff, we encourage you to do so. All are welcome.
Eagleionline
There have been some questions about our new user policy, particularly with how a registered and logged in user may see a particular author's "Real Name" (as opposed to only his/her "Anonymous Name."
Here's what you have to do to see a person's "Real Name":
- Log in. (If you can't log in, you probably haven't registered.)
- Click the title of the relevant article
- Click the "Anonymous Name" of the author
- Scroll down a bit, and you'll see the author's real name.
Part of the confusion, I think, arises because after people are correctly logged in, they are clicking the particular person's "Anonymous Name" on the main page, that is, without having first clicked the title of the particular article (Step #3, above).
When users do this, they don't see the author's real name. Instead, they see a list of all the articles and comments by that particular user.
In order to see the author's real name, you must take the added step of clicking the title of the article (Step #3, above) first. After that, it's smooth sailing: just click the author's "Anonymous Name," scroll down, and you'll see the real name.
Honestly we'd like to be able to fix this, and make the site even more intuitive. But, alas, this particular change is impossible given the constraints of our new backend system.
Please feel free to keep the comments/questions/criticism coming, either in person to any member of Eagleionline or by using the "Contact" tab above.
We've received many comments and tips already, thanks to those people (you know who you are) and especially the person who has called this little Real-Name-Anonymous-Name idiosyncrasy to our attention.
-- Jesse Stellato, Eagleionline
Reader Comments (6)
Slick new site. Much nicer than the old Wordpress tech.
Thanks Eric.
In response to the question "What does the 'Subscribe' button on the top-right of the screen do?":
Clicking "subscribe" while you are viewing a particular page will give you email updates of changes to that particular content.
Say, for example, you want to follow a discussion on Eagleionline about diversity. When you're logged in and viewing the particular article, hit "Subscribe" and you'll be sent an email each time someone comments on the article.
The option also works for the front page (e.g. everytime a new article is published, you receive an email) and for posts in our restricted Community Forum (e.g. if you want to keep track of who is posting in, say, a "Roommate Finder" thread).
Of course, you can disable your updates as well. Just click "View Profile" --> Subscriptions --> Remove.
The problem with the subscription feature is that some email programs might automatically block Eagleionline and other websites as part of their spam protection measures. To solve this problem, we also have set up an RSS feed on the front page of the site (near the login section). So if a user uses, say, iGoogle as her homepage and wants to include a feed to Eagleionline, that's easy to do.
When asking some 1Ls about what features they would like to see on Eagleionline last semester, one told us that she'd like to be able to follow the site on her phone. The iPhone has an RSS app (others might as well), so now her dreams will come true (though we hope that she studies only after keeping up on the site).
We hope that these features will make it easier for members of our community to keep track the content that they are interested in.
Well done, Jesse.
Can I make a suggestion that the Members Only section is available to accepted students who haven't yet decided on BC? I first started reading Eaglei before I'd chosen a school and it was actually a big factor in my choosing to come here. If I hadn't been given that kind of insider's view to the school, and been able to see how passionate students felt about the school politics, I might not have made such a great decision.
Hi Ariele - thanks for the suggestion.
Eagleionline has considered making the entire site open to prospective students, but in the end we decided that it would be best to create both a public section (viewable by the world, including prospective students) and a private section (viewable only by those with a valid "BC.EDU" address).
This way, current students have some control over their audience. If a student wants, say, to write something that he or she might not the world to see (e.g. an email address, a phone number, a politically sensitive editorial), s/he has control over that.
Whether people avail themselves of this option or not, though, we're going to try to continue to write articles on school politics for the front page. We hope that current students continue to take part in those discussions, and of course these articles will be viewable by everyone.
As for the prospective students in particular, we hope to do something special for them soon. Last year, we did a "Why BC?" series in which the Eagleionline editors and others published essays about why BC was such great place to go to school. We might do that again this year.
Of course, if you have any other ideas let us know!
Nice work, EIO team.