How to Help

There are at least 10 -- perhaps as many as 20 websites that try to do the same as this website -- act as a comprehensive source of information about Lexington, MA.  The problems with these sorts of website as multiple:
  1. The get written but they are not maintained.  Things change, and unless you continue to maintain the website, it will die because it becomes less and less accurate over time.
  2. They are limited in scope: the Town of Lexington has a lot of information on it, but not a lot of things that people need in the actual day to day living.
  3. They copy information rather than link to the source of information.  This is a website about where can you find information, rather than what is the information.  Why?  Because where to find information changes more slowly than the information itself.  We will still have to change the sources of information as they come and go, but if we avoid listing explicit information -- such as the days that US Mail is delivered -- we will avoid the mistake of saying Mail is delivered 6 days a week, when there is a chance that mail delivery might be cut back to weekdays.


Specific Ways You Can Help

  1. Alert us about mistakes and corrections.
  2. Make suggestions about additional good information sources you know about.
  3. Make suggestions about new categories of information that are missing from the taxonomy of information present in the menu hierarchy above.
  4. Volunteer to take responsibility for a topic in the menu hierarchy.

How can we work together? 

I have built this website using the Weebly web authoring system.  Weebly has two things going for it:
  1. It is simple to use.  In it's user interface, it is aimed at non-technical people.  At the same time, it allows a technical person (e.g., me) good technology for building webs -- e.g., embedding, templates and style sheets.

    Bottom line: Grass Roots Lexington can be used by everybody, not just technical people.

  2. Websites in Weebly are designed to be worked on by multiple people, simultaneously.  This taps into the collective effort of a large number of people, rather than being limited to the time and availability on one person who is both a gatekeeper / choke point for getting things done.


Let's Get Started

If you are interested in helping, first identify yourself to me by using the all purpose Contact Form.  There are lots of fields in the template message there which define what you want to say.  It is useful to even just say that you are interested in helping out, with no specific commitment or suggestion about what you want to work on.  Thanks.