This week is going to be a busy one for us, so we’re swapping up the usual ordering to highlight our demo night on Tuesday with Code for Boston. Additionally, we’ll be having another event on Thursday night, celebrating the local civic community plus our eighth birthday with Boston Hassle.
Read on below for the demo night details, and register here for Thursday’s event. Both are free!
For previous site improvements, check out all of MuckRock’s release notes.
Come join us at Code for Boston’s demo night
This Tuesday is our usual weekly hack night with Code for Boston, but with a twist: Along with the other open-source projects, we’re doing a demo about our progress the last few months, sharing our vision for a more transparent government and more engaged electorate, and giving you a chance to learn more about getting involved, whether with sharing your design skills, coding expertise, or just helping us build a stronger community. Register here - the even is free and in downtown Boston.
If you can’t make the event, you can still get involved. MuckRock and FOIA Machine are open source. That means anyone can freely inspect, modify, and reuse our code.
Open issues are all listed on GitHub. If you find a bug you can email us directly or open an issue. If you do the latter, please search open issues first to make sure it hasn’t already been reported. If it has been reported previously, please leave an additional comment letting us know it’s an issue for you, particularly if you can provide more details about when it crops up or what you think is causing the problem.
For those who want to contribute design, code, or otherwise more directly to the site, we have a developer channel on the MuckRock Slack. Register here:
Hope to see you tomorrow!
What’s new on MuckRock
Making it easier to register for our weekly newsletter
Our weekly newsletter has been growing in leaps and bounds, but a lot of times people accidentally register for a MuckRock account when they just want to stay in the loop. We’ve add a tick box to also get our newsletter when you register for MuckRock, making it easier to hear what we’re up to. You can also register for the newsletter at the top or bottom of any page. Here’s what the new and improved registration, affectionately known as “MiniReg,” looks like:
Slowing down automatic follow ups on portals
We’re slowing down our automated follow ups for agencies that use portals. Once it’s in their system, that’s usually a good sign that they’ll start tackling it, so we’ll now only follow up every three months, unless they’ve given us an estimated completion date in the future in which case we’ll only follow up every six months or until that estimated completion date comes to pass. You can still always follow up any time you want via the “Follow Up” button - or turn off auto-follow-ups entirely at the bottom of the page.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
