[Businessmtg] Archiving

[Jerry]

Biz-Pals,

In every case I have experienced within Al-Anon a Group Conscience approval preceded ANY purposeful recording or detailed records of personal recovery shares - except, it seems, here at ASP. We sort of fell into it by accident.

Steve mentions how our archiving of shares got started: following ASP's switch over to group ownership the initial List Administrator,  faced with the many options our service provider offered for setting up our mailing list's parameters, simply chose "yes" to the following question,

"Archive messages?" - ( X ) Yes  (   ) No.

Having experienced being a wet-behind-the-ears new List Administrator at the beginning of my own learning curve, I have no doubt this choice was made without much though to long-term consequences because there's so much to think about and learn in the first weeks and months of LA service.

I believe changing ASP's archiving settings to "( X ) No" would correct what I believe was an innocent administrator's mistake.
- This particular archive setting choice was beyond the scope of a simple administrative selection.
- We had no Group Conscience approving the keeping of members' personal shares.

My suggestion for one way this could be appropriately handled comes in two parts which would reverse this error:
1) The List Administrator, recognizing that no Group Conscience exists permitting it, would simply switch the archiving option for the recovery meeting list to "No." [Business Meeting and Steering Committee lists would, if possible, continue archiving.]
2) Any member could then suggest a Business Meeting agenda item proposing we begin archiving future recovery meeting shares.

Another option, of course, would be to continue this Business Meeting discussion through to a consensus, motion, and vote, the results of which would be binding. The list's archiving selection could be left as is or switched to "no" during our deliberations.

Because I think Tradition 2 already binds us in this matter - there was no GC authority which permitted the recording of ASP's personal shares - we don't need a GC to revoke this improper administrative decision; it could simply be left to the LA.

Either way we will have reaffirmed the necessity of a GC on matters affecting the group as a whole.

Jerry
-