I am an editor for the student newspaper at Swansea University – The Waterfront. Along with 26 other editors, we spend a lot of time and effort putting together a fortnightly newspaper, a monthly magazine and a regularly updated website – which James and I built from scratch last summer. We work long hours and do it for free. So, imagine how we feel when the Student Union’s part time Web Editor plagiarises our content and uses it as his own. This has happened several times now and I’ve had enough.

Back in mid March, during the Student Union Sabbatical Elections, a group of editors worked throughout the night. The day started at 3pm and ended at around 7am the next day. In this time, we wrote 46 blog entries, more than 9 articles, kept a live commentary of the events, produced 11 podcasts and kept a photo blog. In addition to this, the editors put together an election special newspaper, printed it and distributed it around campus. A few hours later, when the part time web editor arrived for the day, an article written by Deputy Editor Tim Sculthorpe appeared on the SU website. There was no credit to either the Waterfront or Tim.

Last week was the 2007 Summer Ball. A number of editors attended the event to review the bands and take photos for the Waterfront website. Guess our surprise when the photos we posted to our PhotoBlog appeared on the Student Union website with yet again, no credit to the Waterfront or the photographer.

Now, either the SU web editor doesn’t understand that taking content produced by somebody else and passing it off as your own is plagiarism, or someone higher up in SU management doesn’t. For a university student union, that is extremely disturbing. We get told all of the time how plagiarism is wrong and the consequences of doing it are severe. However, the SU keeps doing it – setting a bad example to students.

Doing something like this reflects very badly on the paper and the union. As a further point, why are students going to continue contributing to the Waterfront when their efforts are stolen by the SU with no credit to their work?

This year we have applied to the Guardian Student Media Awards. This jeopardises any chance we might have of even getting a nomination. It looks as if we are the ones plagiarising the SU web editor.

So, what happens now? Well, firstly, any images used on the Waterfront website will now carry the Waterfront logo as a watermark. Secondly, the next time this happens (and I have no doubts that there will be a next time), I will walk away and resign from the paper.

The first attempt at raising the motion was cancelled due to some last minute problems, but this evening it was heard at the SGM. After a bit of debate about a badly worded point (despite numerous people proof reading it, I’d made a mistake, doh!), the motion was passed.

This isn’t the end of my aim of making the sites more accessible, this motion will be followed up by an article in Monday’s Waterfront newspaper – written by Charlie Duff and supported by Discovery – the disability support charity operating in the university. I’ll post more about that as soon as it is released.

I’ve copied in the motion text below for anyone who is interested.

The Union Notes that:

1. There are 2 million people with sight problems in the UK (Source: RNIB 2007)
2. Sight problems and motor problems can both cause difficulties in using websites
3. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 makes it a legal requirement for all websites to be accessible by October 1999
4. The Internet standards body – W3C – runs a website accessibility initiative that provides 3 levels of accessibility – A, AA and AAA.
5. The RNIB recommends that websites should aim for the ‘AA’ standard
6. Many university departments make use of websites such as Blackboard for providing course documents and submitting assignments

The Union Believes that:

1. The Students’ Union website at www.swansea-union.co.uk does not comply with any of the three levels of accessibility
2. Other SU websites such as the Summer Ball 2007 website also do not comply with these standards
3. Swansea University websites such as Blackboard and Voyager do not comply with these standards
4. Failing to comply with these standards makes university life difficult for disabled students
5. Owners of websites that do not comply are open to legal action under the DDA

The Union Resolves to:

1. Ensure its website(s) comply with all UK laws regarding Website Accessibility to at least ‘AA’ standard
2. Lobby the University to maintain and improve the accessibility of its website
3. Lobby the University to ensure services such as Voyager, Blackboard and the Intranet comply with a minimum of ‘AA’ standard

The evening started in controversy as certain (as yet unexplained) issues arose regarding the people counting the votes. After a hastily arranged emergency meeting – attended by large numbers of security staff, the counting went ahead as planned except for a small delay.

There was one change however; a number of counters were barred from the counting room, reducing the number of people available. Coupling that with extended validity checks on every count and the fact that turn out was up by a 1/3; the length of time before the results were announced was drastically extended.

After several hours (5) of checking blog entries, the first result for Education officer came in at just after midnight. This was followed by Women’s officer about 45 minutes later. By this point we would usually be expecting all but Treasurer and President to be announced, but no, still four to go.

Despite the long gaps between results, there was still a lot to do such as proof reading blogs, fixing mistakes in the releases, making podcasts and visiting the counting room to see how long we had left before the next result. There was one hour where James did nothing but make podcasts non stop.

Finally, after a total of 10 and a half hours, the final result came through. Owen Morgan – the current president had managed to retain his position to stay on for a second term. This result meant that we could put the finishing touches onto the printed paper. After what seemed like ages, it was all over at about 8am.

I have since spent the rest of Friday trying to catch up with sleep and am now watching the rugby. Definitely a good night – albeit very long. The website worked exactly as planned and we have a good batch of content. A total of 46 blog entries, 5 photo blogs and 14 podcasts were made throughout the evening along with our live text commentary that operated all night.

Thanks to Lianne, Bryan, Kim, Charlie, Kate, Dawn, Tim, Dan, Chris, Holly and Nia who all contributed to the blog throughout the night, as well as Pete and Tom who manned the live commentary for the 10 hours.

Also, I should mention the Xtreme Radio team who were up with us all night with their coverage of the election. Despite the long night, they kept on going and provided much needed entertainment for the Waterfront team – and also put up with the Waterfront storming the station for a few minutes early in the morning.

Will next year be any better? We will have to wait and see.

For anyone who’s been listening into the election show, you will have just heard the Waterfront team take over the radio. Will Xtreme be taking over the Waterfront by the end of the night? Only time will tell.

President counting is still ongoing. Get the result here at Waterfront Online and Xtreme Radio.

We are hoping the result for International Editor will be out soon. Keep your eyes peeled, we will be here until the end of the night… or, as is looking more and more likely, early morning.

For the elections, the Waterfront plans to offer more coverage to the students than ever before – making full use of their new website. The website will be publishing blogs and photos throughout the night, interviews with the winners (in blog and podcast form), and a live text commentary of how the night is progressing.

This of course has meant that James and I have been working non-stop getting parts of the admin system in place to make that easier, updating parts of the site so they worked better and of course, designing a brand image for all of our coverage.

With the changes made, and the branding placed everywhere from the paper edition of The Waterfront (issue 154) to every page of the website, election week has finally arrived. We started out by publishing each of the 30 candidate manifestos together with some election build up. I also performed my first interview on Friday with Stuart Rice – Students’ Union General Manager which is now podcasted on the Waterfront website.

Yesterday, voting began and all the candidates were busy canvassing for votes up in Hendrefoelan Student Village. Today, voting continues on campus followed by a night of counting and the announcement of the winners.

Keep an eye on the waterfront website for our updates from 7pm this evening – www.waterfrontonline.co.uk.

Today, a letter bomb exploded at the DVLA headquarters in Swansea, injuring one person. With this major story occurring within our primary catchment area and the possibility of student’s parents being involved in the incident, it was essential that the Waterfront publish something on their website. Andrew Gwilym, our editor put together a quick story and we posted it on our front page at about midday.

Within 10 minutes, it had appeared within the Google News index. This we expected. What we did not expect was for the article to be include alongside (and sometimes above) articles from major news sources such as Reuters, The Guardian and the BBC. For most of the afternoon, our article has been in the top 4 results for the keywords ‘DVLA’, ‘Swansea’ and ‘Letter bomb Swansea’. While this surprised us, we were even more amazed to discover that for a short period, we were also included on the Google News front page, sandwiched between Reuters UK, BBC, Bloomberg and Guardian Unlimited. For anyone who want’s to see this, I have taken a screenshot.

We are amazed at the level of visibility that our small article has been given. Our only explanation is that our new website is easy to navigate, contains a lot of content and is regularly updated so Google counts it as a good source of news. If anyone can offer us a good explanation, feel free to leave us a comment!

Dafydd Vaughan
Web Editor, Waterfront Online