[atlarge-discuss] Membership records Re: [atlarge-discuss] Point of personalprivilege -- I'm ...

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 02:16 +0200 2002/08/05, Alexander Svensson wrote:
>At 04.08.2002 18:44, James Love wrote:
>>Izumi AIZU wrote:
>>
>>>I was quite annoyed when the ICANN staff "destroyed" all the record
>>>of the first election right after they confirmed the result. [...]
>
>I don't think they were physically destroyed, but not using and
>updating them amounts to something similar since e-mail addresses
>change so rapidly that many e-mail accounts are inactive after
>a short period of time. Which reminds of the fact that ICANNatlarge.com
>needs some mechanism for checking/updating its membership records
>as well.

My comments about the deliberate destruction or refusal to use an existing database or registered members would be unprintable so I'll refrain, and just stick the facts of membership management.

Most people's e-mail addresses *don't* just suddenly go dead, unless the supplier of the account goes unexpectedly bankrupt. Most people, once they've adopted e-mail as a method of communication, take steps to advise people when their address will be changing, often keep the old account active for a while to forward mail to the new address, and sometimes even make sure they have a permanent e-mail address by registering a domain name for the purpose. 

Of course, then there are the people who use a Hotmail or Yahoo account and just abandon it when the spam-load gets ridiculous, without necessarily remembering to notify people of the change.

As administrator of a few mailing lists, I find that a bounce rate of perhaps 1%-2% is normal, and rather a lot of those have more to do with people who let their mailbox space fill up. The others can be a real problem to track down unless you have some other means of communicating with them. In fact, most lists simply give up and unsubscribe anyone after a given number of messages bounce.

Within a worldwide membership-based organization with a zero budget, I suspect the best thing to do is to send eveyone a message at intervals, asking for confirmation that the contact details on file are still valid. This can easily be done using a mail-merge and the membership database, and e-mail is cheap enough that one could do this quarterly rather than annually if there seemed to be a need for it.

It should also be possible to impress upon members that it's important to keep their contact information up-to-date. Technically, it's also quite feasible to use an e-mail alias like "update@icannatlarge.com" (cited at the bottom of official announcements, etc.) to steer all the address updates to the person responsible for updating the database.

Another possibility people might like to consider is setting up the organization's Web site to provide permanent e-mail accounts like "joeblow@icannatlarge.com" configured so as to forward mail to whatever ISP account the individual is using at the time. An association I belong to offers its members this option for a small fee and quite a few people seem to have signed up for it (not realizing they could get the same benefit elsewhere for less, I suppose). Something like that could conceivably be used to raise the budget from zero to something that would cover a stamp now and then.

Just a few thoughts...

Regards,

Judyth

P.S. If ICANN has not actually deleted all evidence of the At Large registrations, could that database not be used either to send e-mail to registrants advising them of the subsequent developments? Otherwise, is it really impossible to put up a plain old HTML page one could access from the ICANN home page which would say:

"The ICANN Board of Directors would like to thank the 158,000-or-so people who registered as members of ICANN At Large but must advise them that the organization to which they belong has been abolished and their input is no longer desired. Those still interested in public participation in Internet policy-making may find the following links useful: ..."

and direct them to other organizations? It seems to me something like that would have been simple, inexpensive, and a heckuvalot better PR than what was actually done. It also strikes me that it is never too late, and it would be a lot more useful than trying to interest people in playing "Democrats vs Republicans" or "Liberals vs Tories".


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Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
ICANN At Large Member No. 374546 since July 2000
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"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once 
they have exhausted all other alternatives." (Abba Eban)
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