Dear Webmaster,
I have been assigning my students to read various articles from Military Review for the past several years and I will no longer be doing so after your recent site redesign. Speaking as both an academic with a strong interest in the military and a professional web designer, I can only describe the new site as "pitiful" and a perfect example of how
not to design a site - I may even use the new site as an example of truly pathetic web design to both my students and my clients.
It is my professional opinion that this redesign will result in a significant reduction in the number of readers of Military Review both in professional circles and in the general public. If the goal of the redesign was to kill Military Reviews readership numbers and increase the frustration of potential readers, then it has surely succeeded. Personally, I am shocked and appalled that such a redesign has taken place, especially in light of Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell's
statement that
"If Soldiers are better educated to deal with new media and its effects, they will feel more empowered and be encouraged to act. We need to educate Soldiers on how to deal with the media and how their actions can have strategic implications. They need to know what the second and third order effects of their actions are."
I can only assume, being of a charitable mind, that approval for the redesign came from someone who is woefully ignorant of "how their actions can have strategic implications". To assume the alternate - that this was a willful decision to reduce readership, to hamper professional military education, to increase a general popular perception that the US military is inept and incapable of using the new media effectively - one would also have to assume that the decision came from someone whose purpose is to willfully destroy the effectiveness of US military communications during a time of war, and that is not an assumption I would like to make.
I most strongly urge you,
at the minimum, to make the Tales of Contents pages for all issues available in html format with links through to pdf's of
individual articles. The current practice of lumping the entire issue together in one pdf document is totally unacceptable to anyone who wishes to link to a single article,
which is exactly what most educators and blogger do. As an example of how to meet current academic standards and, I will note, that they tend to be 2 years behind the tehnology edge, consider the website of
Nature or
Science. The goal of a website should be to communicate effectively with your audience and to convey and enhance a professional image. It should not be to frustrate that audience and, by doing so, create negative perceptions of the organization.
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Originally Posted by marct
Dear Webmaster,
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