Should the default page footer contain a licence or privacy notice?

[cofinoa]

Al site's pages use the default layout with the following footer:

<footer>
   <p>
      <a href="http://github.com/esgf">CODE</a> &bull;
      <a href="http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/">PCMDI</a> &bull;
      <a href="http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/">CMIP5</a> &bull;
      <a href="http://www.llnl.gov/disclaimer.html">Privacy &amp; Legal Notice</a>
   </p>
 </footer>

which references to ESGF or CMIP5, and some links are broken (Privacy and Legal Notice)

[cofinoa]

I would suggest to replace by:

<footer>
      <p>
      <a href="TO BE COMPLETED">Privacy &amp; Legal Notice</a> &bull;
      <a href="TO BE COMPLETED">LICENSE</a> &bull;
      <a href="https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-convention.github.io/issues/new/choose"> Report any issue with this web page<a> &bull;
      <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Globe.svg"><em>Globe Logo</em></a>
          by <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tokyoship"> Tokyoship </a> 
          / <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org">Wikimedia Commons</a> 
          / <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC-BY-SA-3.0</a>
      </p>
</footer>

which renders to:

Privacy & Legal Notice • LICENSE • Report any issue with this web page • Globe Logo by Tokyoship / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

I'm not sure which privacy legal notice should be added. The same with LICENSE.

[cofinoa]

This relates to: #58 #65 #64 #67 (?)

[erget]

We also need an "Edit on GitHub!" link - might the footer be a good place for this?

[ethanrd]

@erget - I think we want a "Edit on GitHub" kind of link to be very prominent, not something you have to go looking for. The footer seems like a place for things you are required to have or want available if someone is looking for it. Somewhere at the top seems better for things we want everyone to see.

A lot of projects seem to have a "Fork this on GitHub", "Improve this Page", or similar in the top right corner. So, maybe that is a good (standard?) place for it?

[DocOtak]

Be careful where a "edit on github" type thing links to, on almost all the built docs I see that use sphinx, that button almost always lands me on a 404 page, it happens enough that I usually search for the gh project myself.

[erget]

@ethanrd absolutely right... The easiest way to get a standard GH pages template but there's probably a badge we can embed everywhere. For the sake of not polluting this issue I'm dropping that point - will try not to forget it for the future ;)

[ethanrd]

@DocOtak - Yup, I've seen that too. Got to me careful with that.
@erget - Standard GHPages templates also, I think, handle resizing browser windows and mobile screens better than the current CF pages. I'll add two issues: 1) add "Edit this page on GitHub" badge; 2) Move to standard GHPages template.

[bnlawrence]

I started writing about this a while ago, and got distracted. Anyway, wrt license/privacy notice, I think we should use a CC license (probably this one). We're not a legal entity and don't want to be one, so it's not obvious that we need to bother with any attribution of rights to us. We might, if we were paranoid, require all pull requests to include something like the following at the bottom of the explanation:

I certify that I wrote this content and/or otherwise have the right to pass it on into this documentation where it will be covered by [insert our cc license]

[JonathanGregory]

I have proposed to put a link to the discussion page in the footer in #162, along the line suggested by @erget, and also remove the existing contents of the footer, as originally proposed by @cofinoa in opening this issue. I hope that will be OK for those aspects. Please discuss them in #162 if not.

There remains the issue of whether there should be a licence, perhaps also stated in the footer, which is discussed in this issue. I will change its title to make that more obvious.

[erget]

This conversation got a bit diffuse and spawned a bunch of more focused issues that I think are all worthwhile. I think we should refocus on the license/privacy notice issue. Is anyone interested in pursuing this?

[JonathanGregory]

Since no further interest was expressed in this issue during the last 14 months, I am closing it now.