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

[david@aminal.com]

On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 11:51:04AM -0400, espresso@e-scape.net wrote:
> At 16:04 +0200 2002/08/05, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> >Even if we're not able to supply mailboxes or even e-mail forwarding
> >(which could become bandwidth-consuming if widely used by hundreds of
> >people) we could possibly have on the site a "personal account"
> >section where you can supply and edit your updated personal data (with
> >perhaps some exceptions for data subject to verification, ie a
> >member's own name). In the end, we could integrate everything there,
> >from forum access to voting booth (even if we have to consider that
> >not everybody has web access - some can just use e-mail).
> 

> <snip lots of good stuff>

> One issue about doing everything on the Web is the number of people who have little or no access to the Web. Another concern would be security, I think. Frankly, although e-mail can obviously be intercepted, it's less likely to be a problem than somebody trying to scoop personal information off a Web server. There should certainly be a way to get the membership registrations into a passworded and encrypted database into which the updates could be incorporated. This is already getting out of my depth since I know very little about server side databases but we could do a little research if we don't have people with more expertise amongst us.
> 
> 
> Anyway, as you may have gathered, I'm quite eager that we start taking some concrete steps towards outreach at the same time as we thrash out what we can realistically set out as the charter for this new organization.
> 
> Any and all thoughts on this are most welcome.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Judyth
>

Convenient web and text interfaces are a good idea, we need to make it easy for people to
'keep in touch'.

Centralizing everything does have a downside, though. It means that if there is a failure
or the system is cracked, EVERYTHING is compromised, or lost.

The practice of distributing the membership info to several trusted parties is a good
step in the right direction, we should always be thinking about what happens when (not if)
the system fails.

Perhaps one way to achieve a robust system is to have a nice front end for basic contact
info, but distribute the rest of the functions. I think that even the website might work 
best if it's thought of as a 'portal', rather than as a central repository of information.

This approach also lends itself to taking advantage of diverse resources that may be offered
for our use. A bit of bandwidth here, a little processing power there, several bits of
administrative skill thrown in for seasoning.  

David Schutt



 


 

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