[Businessmtg] Archives

[travelynne2]

I am resending this with spaces -hopefully - the server condensed it and it was hard for me to read. The content is the same! 

 Thank you to Anne for moderating this discussion. I was glad my term as acting Secretary was going to be over before we got to the 3rd month of discussion of this topic. :)

Now that I am not on the steering committee, I can speak solely as me on this topic. I am very, very opposed to not having archives. That is a double negative, so to be clear, I am very in favor of having the archives.

The most important reason is that in my opinion, you cannot function properly as the List Administrator without access to the archives. ASP will be harmed if the List Administrator cannot function properly. So I feel the archives are vital to keep. When (not if) improper sharing occurs at ASP, the List Administrator and the SC need to be able to review the member’s share history to appropriately address and resolve issues fairly and in the best interest of ASP in order to keep the recovery meeting healthy and available to all of us. I find the suggestions that a List Administrator should be responsible to maintain a private archive of shares in their personal email client as part of their job as the List Administrator to be a bit like hiring someone to work in an office and then asking them to bring their own desk, chair, and phone into the office they will be using. ASP should be providing its trusted servants with the tools they need to do their job. I don’t keep an archive of shares in my email client and I would have been pissed off if told I now had to in order to be the List Administrator. And what if I messed that up? Would I be responsible for sharing those emails with the SC if the SC didn't have a personal archive? That gets very confusing and tricky very quickly. Same with the suggestion that 30 days is enough of an archive. I went back months in one case I dealt with and I don’t think we should put a time limit on when the List Administrator and SC should be able to have access to the archives to do their jobs. 

The WSO app terms of use are here: https://alanonmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/upload_640bcb20a079f744e89c1657e812ffd8

At the top of page 2, it says that you "grant Al-anon a perpetual, nonexclusive, worldwide license to use such Content in connection with its business purposes”. That means that ALL shares made at any electronic meeting using the WSO app might be kept and used for business purposes by WSO. 

Below I’ve pasted an email that I sent on January 14th and that I pulled from the BM archive. Both points still stand. Point #1 is the compromise that others have spoken about to limit access to the archives to the SC only. This is possible and easy and would not create undue administrative burdens on the List Administrator and would allow the List Administrator and SC all to have access to the archives for business purposes, just like the WSO retains for all shares on their platform. 

I would be in favor of this change. 

However, this does not address point #2 and how this affects members who currently use the archives to access the meeting. We do not know how many people do this. I personally know of one member who does this. 

If we make a change to the access to the archives, it will fall on the current List Administrator to handle the problems this creates with the members. To that end, I would suggest that IF we get to a consensus on making a change to the archives that we make it effective at a later date - say 3 months after the motion passes to allow the List Administrator to publicize this change with the recovery meeting and deal with the fallout from members who will need to change how they access ASP shares. 

Hugs, Lynne



>From January 14th:
Hi everyone,

Two points of follow up:

1. It is possible to set up a master username/password for the recovery  meeting archives so that only the steering committee could access the  archives. Jerry had asked me if this was possible privately. This would 
allow the SC access to the archives for purposes of their jobs (i.e.  dealing with issues with members and reporting), but would not allow  anyone else access to them. Jerry, please add anything I missed here.

2. The reason that some people use the archives to access daily shares  is that their email clients (like Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc) do not  reliably deliver ASP emails to their inboxes - and in fact block ASP 
emails entirely - so they are not even in their spam or junk folder.  Again, this is entirely an issue with their email client and has nothing  to do with ASP (exactly like ASP emails going into a spam folder - that 
has nothing to do with ASP and everything to do with someone's email  client). If the archives were unavailable, those members would likely  need to switch to a new email address that can reliably deliver ASP 
email, like Gmail. However, while that might sound trivial to some of  you, I can guarantee you that is a big, big deal for some technically  challenged members. A large portion of my job as List Administrator is 
helping people figure out that issues they are having are really with  their email clients and not ASP and giving them some guidance on how  they might solve them. And we do not know how many people use the  archives like this.

Hugs,

Lynne