[Businessmtg] Archives

[Lynne]

Hi everyone,

There seem to be several interconnected issues about the archives.

Anonymity in an email meeting is complicated. And is interrelated with privacy. On one hand, an email meeting is the most anonymous as we never see each others faces. We don’t see what cars each other drive and we never will see each other in the grocery store. Someone could choose to set up a new email address specifically for ASP with a false name and no one would be able to connect that to the real person. On the other extreme are people who choose to send emails to ASP with their real names in the display on the email address. Then there are the in betweens like me - I don’t have my real name displayed on my email address, but if anyone searched my email address in google, I’m sure my real name would come up. We are all comfortable to different degrees with our privacy being breached on a daily basis by shares being sent to hundreds of people each day with varying degrees of personal information - any of whom could save our shares and use them in whatever way they wanted.

Then there is the issue of disclosure. Would being clear in our welcome letter and being clear(er) on the members page that we have an archive then make having an archive ok?

I’ve also thought about what information my husband could find out if he joined ASP. It’s only been recently that I told him that I go to Al anon. I had kept it a secret before and would use ASP on my phone and computer. But when I thought about that, the archives really didn’t play a part. If he wanted to join, he would then be getting my shares on a daily basis. Wouldn’t really matter if he could read them in the archive or not. He’d still be getting them emailed to him from the moment he joined. For me, I had a choice of whether to switch to a new email address to protect my identity or keep using the one I was. I made the choice not to. I figure each member of ASP is able to make the same calculation and choice. And that is irrespective of whether we have archives or not.

Personally, I am not bothered by ASP having an archive that is limited to members who know their password. I say that because I doubt a lot of members know their password that is emailed to them when they sign up. I trust our members not to use them maliciously as I have to trust our members not to use my shares maliciously every single day that I share and that share is emailed to hundreds of people I don’t know who could do anything with that email. 

I also can see why having the archives could go against the principle of anonymity. I just think it is a very complicated issue. And the fact that members do use the archives gives me pause about deleting it. A lot of the issues that have been brought up about the archive won’t go away if we delete the archive. It is only one small slice of how our anonymity could be compromised by sharing at ASP. 

Hugs,
Lynne

P.s. to Jerry about the group conscience. We don’t have a group conscience about many things that have been done at ASP for years because of the history of the meeting and its transition from private ownership to being run by the members. But we DO have a failed group conscience to eliminate them, which means the group at the time did not agree to eliminate them. I don’t think it should matter if it was by a slim margin. Should I look at our group consciences that passed by a single vote and think less of them? Not enforce them as much as the ones that had a clear win?


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