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[PSUBS-MAILIST] Re: [PSUBS-MEMBER-FORUM] discussing same topic in two different forum
Hi Jon,
I brought up the subject of the web forum a week back & asked who looked at
that.
That seems to be the first port of call for anyone wanting to communicate
with Psubs,
& not the general email list.
Because the experienced people aren't going on it, you get somebody who
doesn't know
much asking a question & getting opinions from someone who doesn't know
anything
& no one is contradicting erroneous information. Any thoughts on the web
blogs future.?
There must be a million web sites out there where Jo Blogs puts in his
unqualified opinion
on all sorts of technical subjects. I guess this liability issue will be a
universal problem.
Perhaps there could be a disclaimer that comes up at the bottom of every
email that goes
through the Psubs mail list.
I'm in agreement with others who think there should be one mail list.
We have a facility for member voting, could we vote on this issue.
Alan.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Wallace" <jonw@psubs.org>
To: <member-forum@psubs.org>
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2010 4:46 AM
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MEMBER-FORUM] discussing same topic in two different
forum
Thanks Ian...good points.
In the first instance you mention I don't see any difference between
details that come up on a private list not transferring to the public
list, and not responding to bad information at all if only the public list
existed. In both cases the end result is that bad information ends up on
the list. I think the question becomes, is PSUBS liable for bad info on
its public lists, or maybe put another way, does PSUBS have an obligation
to correct erroneous information submitted to the list or delete
information believed to be a bad practice? I think that is the second
point you mentioned. If we do have an obligation to correct such
information, who are the "experts" that can correct the info? Assuming we
can identify them how do we "force" them to participate and correct the
erroneous information? What if the information supplied as a correction
is also erroneous in whole or in part?
I've talked to a couple of lawyers about liability issues and the common
theme I have gotten from them is that detailed information should be
limited to members. There's no problem having a public web site to
describe what you do, show what you've done, promote yourself and attract
new people. But details such as fabrication practices and advice, the
calculators we publish, etc, shouldn't be open to the public at large.
Now to be fair they didn't cover their mouths and say "OH MY...you're
doing THAT?!?!" However from their legal perspective it wasn't a "best
practice". Another thing to keep in mind is that if we ever became a
non-profit group the IRS would not allow a public mailing list.
I'm not calling for a boycott of the public list, but from my perspective
it would be nice if the public list became a place to answer general
questions, correct erroneous information that might appear there from
non-members, and act as an entry point to pull people into the membership.
There are currently 221 email addresses on the public mailing list. If
you look at the list archive you'll see that only about 10% of those
people actually contribute to any discussions. Of that 10% (22 people on
average), 80% are members. I'll be perfectly honest and say that I don't
feel we have a duty to cater to the 200 email address holders who are just
monitoring the list because of a general curiosity. We don't see a
rotation of those 221 addresses in which a different 10% are contributing
at various times. The reality is that the 10% who are contributing are
the same people all the time.
In some situations, I think reduced visibility may actually be what we
want. This may seem counter-intuitive given that we want exposure for the
organization, and especially coming from someone like me who is constantly
trying to market the organization, but there are some good reasons for
doing so. One is that a few of our members have been told "off-record"
that some authorities believe we are one mistake away from federal
regulation. Well, mistakes are definitely going to be made. While I'm
not suggesting we hide things, do we really want our mistakes advertised
in a public arena?
Jon
On 8/19/2010 12:12 AM, irox wrote:
Just wondering.... but if you fork a thread, and an important detail
comes up on the private list, but not the public one, say something
that would save somebody time, or money, or from getting hurt. What
happens then?
I think both lists have their purpose and really don't mind how they
are used, but I am little concerned about liability issues when one
group is getting better information than another group. If discussions
are taken away from the public forum and somebody gets bad information
it will probably not be good for psubs.
Cheers!
Ian.
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