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mysociety / alaveteli

Provide a Freedom of Information request system for your jurisdiction
https://alaveteli.org
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Guide users towards making well phrased requests #6163

Open RichardTaylor opened 3 years ago

RichardTaylor commented 3 years ago

The service could prompt users to phrase their correspondence as a request for information with a minimal template.

Current

Screenshot 2021-03-17 at 12 26 15

Proposed:

Screenshot 2021-03-17 at 12 26 05

Please release [describe the information you are seeking here]

It might be good to offer advice eg. "All you need to do is describe the information you are seeking".

More links to advice eg.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/requesting#responsible

could be offered.

The aim here is to help users who are intimidated by a blank "your request" box.

RichardTaylor commented 3 years ago

See also https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/issues/6164.

garethrees commented 3 years ago

Our partners in the Netherlands have done some interesting work around this. They've built a request generator ("wob generator") which helps users compose requests.

Screenshot 2021-06-14 at 08 37 07

I believe they then use (or, are intending to use) the pre-filled request API to initiate a new request with the composed request.

Of course, I'm more in favour of the quick win originally suggested at this point, but wanted to note this here for future reference.