Invasion of Privacy - or spreading the word

[Guest guest]

The particular blog-spot which posted material from the Cancercured site

appears to be based in Indonesia.

It's something of a privilege to be able to make the information we

handle here available over there, even if it is a bit silly to include

every post. Maybe somebody goes through every now and then to weed out

a number of posts.

A lot of what we post is questions, ephemeral information, interpersonal

exchange and stuff that does not really need to be kept for posterity.

Searching the archives for the meat some people have provided would be a

daunting task for a newcomer in a hurry.

One solution I saw and admired and appreciated was on a Lyme list.

There, one of the assistants seems to have taken threads of some import

and consolidated, organised and saved the exchanges between some list

members and the owner. This was amazingly useful and interesting. These

posts were accessed via the files, and were well " labelled " for easy

topic identification. As far as I know, the " normal " archives may have

been deleted from time to time, which is good. If they were able to

keep on top of a task like that, it would avoid " wasting " storage and

keep things in some sort of order and proportion.

I have often thought it would be really useful to have our meatiest

information kept in a document on the website files. It would be a

colossal task, and I don't know who would do it, though one would

suppose there may be people with sufficient time and energy to at least

make a start. For instance, what about Gammil's posts? If one

were to have a document that stored even just what has written

about various topics, it would have tremendous value in searches.

The other major thing that hinders searches is the no-longer-appropriate

headings that so often appear, when the topic has wandered far away from

the original subject heading. It's probably just as well to raise the

topic of subject lines with the membership every now and then, because

even those of us not new to discussion groups are liable to hit reply in

our enthusiasm and leave up some heading like " Question " or " Help "

rather than adding to it or modifying it in some way for readers in a

hurry or subsequent searchers to have a good pointer towards relevant

information it may contain.

Some headers invite attention immediately, others get passed over,

possibly not to be looked at for months. The likelihood is that comment

under a no-longer-appropriate subject header will be missed by a person

who most needs it unless they study every post carefully as they come

in. Not everyone has time or energy to do that.

Every now and then, I have collected posts on a particular topic or by a

particular person and saved them in a document. If something like this

might form a nucleus of documents of posts that newcomers could search

through for relevant information, I could send them in for the moderator

to consider for inclusion in the files section on the website. People

new to discussion groups might not always be aware they can search

through such files, so they could be told about it on joining.

I notice that the blog I looked at did include the name of this group,

so interested people could head on over here. The bloggers are not

claiming authorship, and quite possibly not even monitoring the mail, at

least not immediately. There is a lot of garbage on the web; at least

they are posting something that can be of use to a sick person in

another country. Our material could be misused in so many ways - this

particular use is not particularly damaging to anyone, even if it is a

bit short on protocol or a bit silly (because of unmonitored uploading).

The No-Owner issue is probably the one that would justify moving, if it

causes operational problems. I'll go with whatever the brave souls who

have undertaken to be moderators decide. If a new group is started, I

guess it is going to need a new name unless the moderators are able to

close down this site. As the membership and moderators tend to the

holistic or natural methods of treatment, maybe this could be reflected

somehow in the title.

One group I joined on the topic of far infra-red saunas closed down, but

the owner left it accessible so people could wander through the archives

at will. That might be a possibility here. A note could be left saying

that current discussion has been moved to --- group, but that people

could join the old group on a search-only basis to access the past

discussions. That way there is not such a mammoth task for volunteers,

and the relocation of past discussion to the new group could be limited

to the major posts on particular topics, or ones however small which

give usable information.

If there were enough volunteers, each one could perhaps construct

documents for storage based on topic or contributor, e.g. pancreatic

cancer, or " Comdyne " , or " Sircus " or " Bormann " or whoever.

Another possibility is that such people might accept an invitation to

supply a paper or essay encapsulating at least basic approaches to

research and protocols based on their experience which could be uploaded

to the files section. The Files could also be divided into sections

according to topic or author.

One question if such a project were undertaken is: what would be the

best format for such storage documents - pdf file, Word document, html

document or something else?

Otherwise yes - " Privacy? What privacy? " At least people do have to

join to read, apart from people who track down the information from open

blogs.

I join in a message of appreciation to the moderators and the busy

people with valuable and professional experience and information who

support and manage this group.

Rowena

On 19/03/2010 8:33 PM, -owner wrote:

> Here's the link to the latest blogspot:

>

> http://cancertruthfacts.blogspot.com/

>

> The uploads stopped after I deleted four suspect members.

>

> To summarize:

>

> There is concern about the loss of information that is archived here if we

move to a new group.

>

> There is concern about maintaining two groups as people might not get the

support they need if they post in the wrong group.

>

> There are those who would like a bit more privacy

> .

>

>

[Guest guest]

Hi Rowena.

Thank you. It is very refreshing to see someone really thinking things

through and actually take the time to order then well and type them up.

I would like to add only one thing as of now.

I have tried to row through the muddy waters of the discussion archive

not only here, but also elsewhere. It just can't be done by a single

person looking for answers, of which particularity they can't identify

at the beginning. The worst of it are the message tailings, when people

do not bother to snip a tail of easily 20 messages behind their own

reply except that, to what they are replying to in particular.

This is our individual responsibility as members, whether the group

changes, or stays the way it is, as I definitely hope it will, I would

like to ask every single member to have mercy on the moderator, those

who come to the group later and in the end even to themselves and get

those tails off their messages. Please.

With kind regards, Slavek.

[Guest guest]

*An idea that may be worth thinking about:

Copyleft Policy as stated on

http://www.touristradio.com.au/pages/permaculture_wa.htm

Resources of the Western Tourist Radio website, either in full or in

part, can be copied, quoted, reprinted, given away or circulated. Parts

may be torn out, extracted and enhanced. In short, all resources are

public property. Please use in any way to build the skills and knowledge

of citizens in building healthier communities and more vibrant local

economies.

Copyleft Policy borrowed from http://www.bankofideas.com.au/

Rowena

*