First, the official line for what it's worth. Strictly speaking, promotion in the forums of "any product, publication, service or other venture, regardless of whether or not it is for profit" is against the site's acceptable use policy. In practice, there are few of exceptions to that rule, primarily based around how you define "promotion" and the nature of what's being discussed.
In brief
- If someone asks for a recommendation, it's fine for a relevant vendor/developer/service provider to respond with relevant, factual details of their own product(s) - in other words it shouldn't read like a press release. The rationale being that these details are useful for the OP and other readers and likely to generate relevant input from other members on the same topic.
- If someone is developing a product, asking for beta-testers is OK. The rational here being that although there's a clear promotional benefit to the developer, beta-testing is important to all future users and we're in a position here to provide some of the most knowledgable testers available. This is something of a grey area, though, and I wouldn't want to see requests for beta-testers abused as a means of circumventing the general policy of no advertising in the forums (to date, it hasn't been).
With regard to the post and website under discussion here, although it probably would have been appropriate for the OP to run it past me first, I don't have a big problem with the request for feedback on this particular project. It's apparently educational and non-commercial (possibly not even ongoing) so I think we can afford to turn a blind eye on this occasion to any transgression of the AUP.
Further, I think the basic question of what people want from a DF community website is a good one and, frankly, there are one or two elements on this project site which serve as a reminder that there's still more we can do here at Forensic Focus (OK, for "we" read "I"!) I especially like the video tutorials covering basic aspects of the investigative process for example.
Hope that clarifies some of my own thinking on this issue.
Cheers,
Jamie
Hi guys,
First of all I'd like to apologize for not running the website past you first Jamie, but also thank you for over looking the issue and allowing the post to stay.
Thanks for the support of our site and feedback that you have given so far, in response to the question of why the website is being put together, it is purely for a university assignment. We are all on a Computer Forensic Investigation course in which one of our modules is a team project, it was recommended that we keep our project related to our course and that was something that we wanted to stick too. Whilst other teams have decided to try and program forensic tools we wanted to take a different approach and this is what we came up with, helped by the fact that we, as a team, have limited programming experience. The website is indeed purely educational.
We look forward to hearing more of your feedback and any general comments you may have.
Thanks again!
Let's set aside the "negativity" and try to be pragmatical.
- What is the "scope" of the site?
- Is this scope easily perceivable by the casual onlooker?
- Is this a "serious" commitment or just a way to fulfill an assignment?
On first sight, it seems to me like the site does not in any way reflect the scope that is declared here, it seems a lot like "long time experts" attempting to teach to "complete newbies".
I.e. it seems to me like a "mockup" of what could be a "real" digital forensics "divulgation" site as it will be written/created once the actual Authors will have the experience.
Right now the impression is that the Authors have already enough experience on the topics and that there is a wish to share it, but when some time in spent in actually reading the contents, it is clear (no offence intended whatsoever ) ) that everything is very, very "light" or "thin", the generic talk about cases
http//
is something that could be result of a class assignment like "Talk about three cases that you remember" (before the teacher corrections on grammar/syntax)
Without computer forensics existence, Dennis Rader many have possibly gone on to kill 10’s if not 100’s of other innocent people and with the police and attorney’s in agreement, it was decided there was enough evidence to suggest Dennis was guilty of serial killing and was sentenced behind bars indefinitely.
i.e.
If someone would have not stopped him, he would have continued.
😯
http//
There are more than a few typos scattered here and there
http//
Rescources being the most prominent, but also the actual English (said from a non-native English speaker roll ) has more than one issue (I would call it "appalling", but probably I am not qualified enough to do so)
We have used expert knowledge and experience to craft some documents that may be useful to the new forensics examiner in the field, download them and take them into the field with them feel free to iplaod your own documents that you think people will benefit from in the forums our moderators will check them and feature them on this page.
I know I probably sound like an old grumpy b*****d (basically because I am an old grumpy b*****d wink ) but I find that someone not careful enough to check spelling and proofread for syntax/grammar rarely possesses the "right" kind of accurateness to do forensic work, let alone teach others how to do that.
In any case, spending some time to remove these minor glitches should not be a problem, as well as making more clear the actual level of experience of the Authors (i.e. tone it down a little when experience is mentioned), but what really is not clear to me is the "destiny" of the site.
How long do you plan to keep it alive?
Just until you get a good grade for the assignment?
If yes, you are not doing a service to the community, you are simply temporarily distracting resources/attention from "established" sites and your and whatever "third party" contributions will be wasted or forgotten/lost in a short span of time.
If no, then are you (either you personally or the team as a whole) driven by the passion for this field?
Are you willing to keep up with the site even once you will be past your studies?
?
jaclaz
It quickly became apparent to us that there was little information available for trainee investigators and people with an interest in computer forensics but no previous industry or educational experience with regards to conducting an investigation……
To combat this problem and fill this gap in the market, First For Forensics has been created.
Is this marketing guff or did you not bother to look at what's available.
Also, I'm pretty sure that F3 (First Forensic Forum) would have a problem with the name you are using.
Patrick, it's the Vogue thing to do.
I'm more interested in why people who have never worked in the field of computer forensics would be in a position to teach others about the field they have no practical experience with.
Patrick, it's the Vogue thing to do.
I'm more interested in why people who have never worked in the field of computer forensics would be in a position to teach others about the field they have no practical experience with.
It' s funny because it's true.
This incidentally is why I refuse to get a post-grad anything in CF - because it's almost impossible to find a professor in this field who has more experience than me and many of my friends in this field.
I have a fundamental problem helping universities, or university student in their thesis or project.
But . . .
First, I have yet to see a non-profit university. Sure, sure - legally in the eye of the taxmen they do not make profit. Of course not, because they plow it back into building, crazy researches but mostly exorbitant compensation for ivory tower, senile, 90 year olds.
Second, I am exhausted of providing brain dump of decades of my hard labor yet see little giving back to the community. You can look back on all the students who came here, received slightly sardonic, yet very good direction, information and reference. How many of the came back and wrote - "thanks, I got my grade, and here is the final paper to share back to the community"?
Finally, I see little originality in the web site design or content. Of course, it has all the appropriate pages, required buttons, links to social media, pretty sliding menus, and so on… Run at least a spell check - you are embarrassing our forensics community. Stop with the consultant/marketing blabber. It turns off most forensic scientists, in my experience.
Just my first impression on the site, have a close look at the language being used (the grammar is not the best either).
Try and avoid phrases like "use the evidence against the suspect", police or investigators are not meant to "use evidence" against anyone, the idea of any investigation is to expose the truth or facts of an "alleged" crime or incident.
I'm not going to tell you how I would word things like that as we all have different ways of writing, but the language overall seems to come across a bit aggressive and makes me think of what you might see on a personal injuries lawyers website, you know ambulance chaser types.
I could care less about the looks and how pretty a website is, the main thing I look at on a site that will be heavy on written content is font and the colours used. My only thought there is maybe a slightly off white background, heading towards sepia as this is a little easier on the eyes than white background. Might seem like a minor point but for those of us who are getting on a bit the background can make the difference between a short visit or hanging around a bit longer to read more content.
Perhaps this is a little away from the point; but is a WordPress site enough to get you credits?
I finished uni a couple of years ago, and I had to write everything from scratch (we weren't even allowed to use JQuery in our Web-Dev modules).
That aside, I like the idea, but might it be more practical, given that you yourselves are students, to gear it towards other students? Perhaps those just entering CF?
Other than that, I think everything else I could contribute has already been said above.
Apologies that it has taken me so long to reply, we were busy putting the finishing touches to the website before it got graded which has now happened.
I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback with regards to the website, things like spelling errors and grammar we completely overlooked in favor of getting all the content on there in time. However I did have a look over the website for grammar errors and used a spell checker so in theory they should all be fixed now.
We have now been graded on the website and we did in fact receive a good grade that we are all happy with, so thank you guys again for the role that you did play in that with your feedback )
As far as the continuation of the website goes, it will continue to stay live, however further development on it will likely not take place just yet due to other assignment deadlines rapidly approaching for us all. We do have plans to continue development on it and keep it running so feedback that you have given us will not go to waste, updates will likely be done as we gain more experience ourselves (we are mostly all on an industrial student placement next year and hopefully we will gain more experience due to this).
I will continue to look at this thread and note down any further feedback should there be any more.
Many thanks again!
The First For Forensics Team