[GSBN] private vs public archives

Sat Nov 14 15:09:34 UTC 2009

Thanks for your welcome.

Bill is right concerning the fear that technology could complicate.

I manage interactive communication (information architecture) since
1986 ( started with Minitel, France) and since then I participate in
many different projects, so I hope my experience can be useful for you
at this point of the discussion.

As I understand, this list puts together a small group of persons with
a deep professional knowledge on various aspects related with straw
bale building. It seems you like to keep a close relationship and
friendly atmosphere BUT, at the same time, you are happy to share your
knowledge with the general public.

Some of you feel uncomfortable to make publicly the discussions /
brainstorm, because there are some personal aspects on focus. This
reluctance is absolutely normal and we all face it (and protect!)
everyday in our lives.

So, we have private discussions and public conclusions.

a) Private discussion can be done as usual, using email or (for those
who prefer) web base forms.

b) Public conclusions should fulfill the technical aspects general
public are looking for.

One way to solve this is to organize the discussions in a forum. Some
forums have a Email Integration (New Threads/Replies by and through
email), as you may see here:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=169247
There are some other solutions (I will send them to Bill, so I do not
bother you with technical software issues).

Conclusion:

1. Discussions can be only for members eyes, and members can keep
using the normal email to do it.
2. Public areas can be organized by specific areas of interest
(Structures, Moisture, Plaster, Insulation, Codes, Insurances, etc,
etc), so that the public (and members...) can find what they are
looking for.
3. The member who starts a particular discussion writes the
conclusions to a specific public area (knowledge base). Its easy and
fast, and we can create a simple guide line how to do it.
4. Both private and public areas can be easily searchable

kind regards

Jorge

On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Bill Christensen
<billc at greenbuilder.com> wrote:
> Ok... these are legitimate concerns.
>
> I suppose I could set up a separate area for those discussions which warrant
> privacy.  It's not a huge amount of work to do that.  Keeping the subscriber
> list current might be a mild annoyance, especially as the list grows in
> size...
>
> Jorge Van Krieken, our new member from Portugal, emailed me off list after
> reading some of the recent archives with the suggestion that we go with a
> web-based forum, which could have private areas and public areas.  My
> response was that in my experience, busy people such as those on this list
> tend to NOT use web based forums as doing so typically requires at least the
> extra step of logging in to the web forum, and doing that tends to get put
> off until some mythical "later".   We read email, knock out a quick (or in
> some cases, thoughtful) reply, and move on to the next email.   Also, a
> number of our users are still on dialup (as far as I know), which compounds
> the problem.
>
> Personally, I use web forums a lot.  But I use them mostly to answer
> specific questions, and once those questions are answered I may not log in
> for months.  I'm not currently aware of any web forums which allow both the
> sending of all forum posts to the subscribers' email AND allow members to
> reliably and securely post TO the forum by email.
>
> At the very least a web forum would be able to send an email to everyone
> letting them know that there's a new discussion in progress, and usuallly
> can be set up to send the posts' contents out by email. Then if someone had
> an opinion or other discussion they'd have to log in to throw in their two
> cents.
>
> It's also possible for me to set up a parallel email list specifically for
> private discussions, with members-only archives.
>
> It's a similar amount of work to set up either.  Do any of you have any
> particular objections to or interests in seeing one or the other?
>
>
>
> At 5:53 PM -0800 11/12/09, stoneandstraw wrote:
>>
>> Bill,
>>
>> My only concern, and it is a minor one, is that without the ability to
>> have a "private" conversation among those on the list (all together), the
>> nomination of a new member to the list is really a selection of that person
>> by the nominator.  IOW, if anyone did have reservations about John Dough's
>> nomination, would they express them, knowing that John Dough and everyone
>> else would eventually see those thoughts?
>> This is, as I said, a minor issue mostly because before any of us nominate
>> a new "member," we are pretty good about vetting the appropriateness of the
>> candidate ourselves.  However, the situation could arise where some very bad
>> and telling experiences with a candidate might only be known to 2-3 members,
>> and that candidate could then be nominated by one of us who is ignorant of
>> the negative experiences. For example, I had a reasonably good experience
>> with a straw bale builder, about whom others on this list knew of some
>> pretty poor experiences.  ...experiences that showed this person did not
>> really have (1) the level of expertise claimed, (2) the commitment to
>> improving overall construction quality, nor (3) a desire to share and learn
>> as a community.  It was only because of a casual conversation at a CASBA
>> meeting that I found out of the rest of the story.  If I were to have
>> nominated this person (in my ignorance), I doubt that my well-mannered
>> colleagues would have spoken up against the nomination - even though they
>> probably should.
>> Just my $0.02 worth.
>> Nehemiah
>>
>>
>
> --
> Bill Christensen
> billc at greenbuilder.com
>
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