[Cynnabar] Cynnabar Survey

[Malachy von Ulm via Barony]

On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 11:05:53AM -0400, Kay Jarrell wrote:
> Since only about 15 people appear at meetings this is a good example of a
> discussion it would be more effective to have online. What do people think?

FWIW, it's also worth prodding facebook that the convo is happening here.  I
suspect the overlap between mail and facebook is not as good as one might
like.

> And a Google form would be a good way to create a database of names,
> numbers, emails, addresses, whatever people were willing to put out there.
> I know there are people serving Cynnabar's interests who are good with this
> tool.

Online forms are fine for collection, and really the most practical way to
maintain such things easily.  I think it's a bit more a question of the
contents and accessibility.  

Her Excellency writes on the matter:
> Let's absolutely have this discussion online. In particular, we need to talk
> about the format (a list? a booklet?), and clarify what kind of information
> will be collected and who will have access to it. If it's an online list,
> will it be password-protected? If it's a physical booklet, who will receive
> copies? I personally don't care if my contact information is made public,
> but I know others feel differently.

My own preference would be something that's online accessible.  However, I
do understand that some people would be happy publishing some information
only if it never was in an online format.

Paper copies tend to end up with stale information quickly, and they don't
update frequently.

(I kept household rosters for Shadowclans and Ironwolf in prior years and am
a bit opinionated for this reason.)

---

It might help to talk about "what do we want" before worrying too much about
the "how do we go about it".

For my part, when I want to contact someone:
- I'm fine poking a central online form, maybe the baronial site.
  + It'd be nice to keep it accessible only within the barony.
  + But that means it needs some password protection. (Authentication, for
    the security minded folk.)  This could be as simple as poking the link
    that says "send me my password" and it gets sent to your registered email.
- Most of the time, some sort of online contact is fine:
  + That site could just give me their email address if they're willing to
    let it be public.
  + They might want to permit email contact, but prefer to not hand it out.
     We could have it run a "mail relay" that keeps the address private.
     This isn't hard to do, but has some annoying headaches for the site
     operator.
  + It could point me to a facebook ID.
- Phone:
  + It could point me to a phone number.
  + It might tell me whether this is a cell phone or not and whether text
    message is okay.
- Address is probably not needed much these days since most contact can
  happen online.  But we *could* put it there if someone wanted.

---

In my case, I'm fine with giving out mundane name, address, phone number and
email along with facebook URL.  This information has been so public domain
for me for years (Internet domain contacts) that I'm used to it being out
there.

Most of our officers are in a similar boat.  For example, when I can't find
Midair's info, I just look in old copies of the Pale. :-)


-- 
Malachy

"Ancient nightmares. Archaic legends.  Enigmatic dreams. All of it is true."
Abney Park - All the Myths are True.