Last week there were a number of bug fixes pushed out, including fixing one bug report that netted the reporter three requests as our thanks. See below for all the updates and how to help make MuckRock even better.
For previous site improvements, check out all of MuckRock’s release notes, and if you’d like to get a list of site improvements every Tuesday - along with ways to help contribute to the site’s development yourself - subscribe to our developer newsletter at the top or bottom of this page.
What’s new on MuckRock
Fixing historically broken document embeds
Every once in a while, a document upload gets gummed up somewhere along the way. Almost always, these documents are still accessible via the download link, but our DocumentCloud-powered viewer might not work. We pushed out changes this morning to try and address these issues. If you see viewers that are broken or buggy, please let us know!
Attachments stay attached when editing drafts
William Pierce spotted a bug where if you submit a request, notice a typo or something else you want to change, and edit it within the 30 minute window, any attachments on that request were discarded. That’s now fixed, and we’ve added three requests to Pierce’s account as thanks for spotting the bug!
Making CSV export more reliable
Pro and Organizational accounts can export any search query as a CSV with a whole host of fields to help organize and analyze requests. We’ve pushed out fixes to make this work more reliably, particularly when downloaded data on tens of thousands of requests at a time.
Come hack on MuckRock
We have a growing group of volunteer hackers helping to make MuckRock better every day. We want to make it easier to contribute, so we’re launching a new project and weekly newsletter, “Release Notes.” Register to get a summary of site updates each week, a list of issues you can help with, and details about our Code for Boston meetups.
Check out some of our issues labeled “help wanted” for ideas on where’s good to start, or just pop into our Slack’s #Developers channel.
Subscribers to the weekly newsletter get exclusive data sets, FOIA-related scripts, and other transparency hacker tidbits exclusively for subscribers. You can subscribe to to the newsletter at the top or bottom of this page.
If you want to contribute better FOIA tools for thousands of requesters, there’s a number of ways to help. If you find a bug you can email us directly or open an issue on GitHub.
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.
In addition to the new newsletter, we have a developer channel on the MuckRock Slack. You can also join us at Code for Boston’s weekly hack nights, which take place Tuesday evenings in Kendall Square. We might not make it to every one of them, so if you want to meet up there it’s a good idea to check in on Slack first or check the newsletter. We will be at tomorrow’s meetup.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
