[uwebd] URL shortening

[Jeffrey Butera]

Like some, we have gone ahead and installed our own URL shortener on
campus and it's working well.

For those who have also done so, I'm curious if you have any
policies/procedures you're willing to share. Before we open this up for
anyone on campus outside of IT, we want to have some policies in place
to clearly define what's possible and permissible for those on campus.


--
Jeffrey Butera, PhD
Associate Director for Applications and Web Services
Information Technology
Hampshire College
413-559-5556

http://www.hampshire.edu
http://www.facebook.com/hampshirecollegeit


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[Ian McBride]

We first launched a URL shortener in 2004 as an internal tool. Later on we opened up a web form where people could request shorter URLs that we'd add to the database. In 2009 we made it into a self-service tool that anyone with an account at our college can use to make their own short URLs. There's no pre-approval workflow in place, however there is a public listing of the short URLs (http://go.middlebury.edu/gotionary.php) with an interface to report a URL that you think is malicious or otherwise inappropriate. The system also requires users to log in to create links and logs all actions.

Incidentally, the source code for our shortener is available here: https://github.com/middlebury/GO

We were a bit lucky that we already had language in our handbook that says that IT does not police the content of our site and that inappropriate use of our services will be reported to the Dean of Students, Dean of Faculty, or HR as appropriate. The language appears to have changed a bit since, but it was and is part of this policy http://www.middlebury.edu/about/handbook/lis/responsible_use. It wasn't until 2012 that we actually had an incident that required a disciplinary response, and it came as a bit of a surprise to the Dean's office that they were being asked to step in, but with the handbook language in place we were able to work through that and resolve the issue. I'm not aware if there have been any incidents since then.

Ian McBride

Middlebury College

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Jeffrey Butera <jbu...@hampshire.edu> wrote:

Like some, we have gone ahead and installed our own URL shortener on campus and it's working well.

For those who have also done so, I'm curious if you have any policies/procedures you're willing to share.  Before we open this up for anyone on campus outside of IT, we want to have some policies in place to clearly define what's possible and permissible for those on campus.


--
Jeffrey Butera, PhD
Associate Director for Applications and Web Services
Information Technology
Hampshire College
413-559-5556