Mike points out that this piece by Philip Greenspun may be relevant to my thoughts regarding our departmental website:
http://philip.greenspun.com/research/academic-web-research.html
Sadly, I think Phillip is right: journal publications are the only thing that matter. There is no getting around publish-or-perish. You have to bring in grant money, and you can’t do that without peer review.
I wrote a bunch of other things here, and decided, really, they don’t matter. The website redesign is a fun idea. It’s more about fostering communication and collaboration than anything else; two things I seem to do naturally, and two things that shape much of my own work and practice. The proposed redesign is nothing more than a fun distraction to fill some of the in-between moments; I don’t see this kind of change taking place—not here, not now.
But I like the idea nevertheless.