Branch listings on www.aauw.org
Severity: moderate
Audience: small
Fiscal effect: probably (folks get inaccurate info and then decide not to join at all)
Policy question: yes
Reported: yes, multiple times
Link: http://svc.aauw.org/about/branches.cfm
It’s not clear to me why this is so hard. There are branches listed (in NC at least) at the address above that haven’t paid dues or sent in any other forms for years. I can understand the Association being very careful about declaring a branch “dead,” but at some point, this gets ridiculous. For instance, according to the 2003 February 1 report, AAUW UNC Pembroke hasn’t paid any Association dues since FY2001, and it actually dropped off the 2005 report. But it is still listed as an NC branch on www.aauw.org.
What’s up? From a computer science point of view this sounds like a “deadlock” problem - maybe the Association is waiting for forms to come back and those responsible for completing the forms won’t/can’t get them sent back. Can’t the policy get changed to handle cases like this and make www.aauw.org more accurate?
[And while we’re looking at those branch listing pages is there any way to change the headings, say “Wyoming AAUW Website” to “AAUW Wyoming Website”? It’s hard enough to get folks to follow the Style Guide and always put the AAUW first without modeling the deprecated practice.]
On the other hand, I can’t find that “rule” (e.g. AAUW Raleigh and AAUW NC, not Raleigh AAUW and NC AAUW) in the current edition of the Style Guide. I’m pretty sure I didn’t make it up. Does anyone know what happened to it?
Comment by Nancy — December 10, 2005 @ 2:00 pm
[…] Sometime in the last year the two pages above were coded so that the data they displayed comes directly from the database rather than being hand coded. There are still problems in that the information posted there doesn’t seem to agree with the reports that are generated for other purposes. The branch listing problem was described elsewhere. The C/U problem can be just as annoying: institutions show on that list then disappear for no apparent reason. The list now shows 16 institutions in NC, but only 13 were reported to us when we asked for information to mail the state newsletter. […]
Pingback by BBVX Blog » Dynamic data doesn’t seem to be correct — June 4, 2006 @ 8:24 am
Well, we submitted paperwork (from our point of view “again” for at least some of the branches, though the membership department says none was ever received) for the 6 dead (zero members for at least two years) branches. We were told the Association exec committee would be asked to approve this disbandment on their August conference call. As of today, the six branches are still listed on www.aauw.org. May be a summer slow down, but we’ll keep you posted.
In a related development, AAUW CA Online requested an official change in its name to the “California Online Branch.” This seemed to be the only way that it could change its listing on www.aauw.org to be filed under C instead of A. [None of the other branches, e.g. AAUW Sacramento, have “AAUW” in their names in that listing. Why the Online branch got the honor of having the prefix is a mystery. In any event, it’s caused continuous confusion since folks see that BRANCH listed first and think it is the online arm of the STATE organization.” That request was approved months ago, but when the branch president tried to follow up last month, the result was that the branch was dropped off the list entirely. Hopefully that’s temporary … [And hopefully the word “branch” won’t appear on the listing …]
Comment by Nancy — September 5, 2006 @ 7:01 am
Whoo-whoo! Sometime in the last week the six “dead” branches were taken off of www.aauw.org’s listing of the NC branches.
A few days earlier, the CA Online Branch was moved from A to C (with a couple of days in limbo - and we don’t know how long it will have “branch” at the end while none of the others do).
So there’s progress.
Comment by Nancy — September 13, 2006 @ 4:01 pm