seventeenth

Betsy said seventeen!

I'd love to count the votes.

Word to what Jon says, about the individual permission being something that could be done as a web page on b.org for ease-of-permission-giving. More people will opt in the easier it is to do so, right?

I haven't heard any objections to this proposal, but don't let that stop anyone from voicing them. Making it double-approved -- board-voted, and then individually opted-in -- feels nice and safe to me.

If this passes, I'd like to suggest that the "permission email" be done using a form here at b.org. It's very easy for me to set up something that will only be accessable to logged-in users. The form would send an email that automatically includes the users' email and board name. The advantage to erin is security. She'll know that she's not receiving any spoofed emails.

Yes, please, thank you! The ANC was very concerned about spoofed emails. Jon, I'll send you an email address just for this, 'kay?

Making it double-approved -- board-voted, and then individually opted-in -- feels nice and safe to me.

I really wanted this, because I feel that we all own the space of B.org. Letting people include their posts without the permission of the board as a whole seemed a little too "I'm gonna take MY marbles over here!" to me ...

It's fantastic. And, silly me, I'll probably vote for the proposal and not opt in myself. So I'm glad for the double protection.

A couple of questions.

1) What do we do about quoted text? That is, if a non-opted-in user is responded to and quoted by an opted-in-user, will that text be stripped? Because since quotes tend not to be specifically attributed here, it could be really really difficult to do this.

2) Will all personally identifiable information be impersonalizated, or just user & person names? I'm thinking about locations, addresses, directions, companies, phone numbers, etc. I don't think we have too much of the latter few, but still.

I would say that quoted text should just be stripped out. It would be way too difficult to try to go back and attribute everything, and if it's from someone who opted in, then it would be there in the original post anyway.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can do much about quotes. We won't put the COMM thread in for ANC just for that reason, but in the other threads it might not be fixable. I can ask the ANC programmers. I think they're tagged as 'blockquote', but I'll have to test it.

As far as I know, all personally identifiable info is stripped. They've done it before for transcripts of phone conversations.

Can we start voting high noon, board time, Friday?

I think they're tagged as 'blockquote', but I'll have to test it.

Most quotes are tagged as blockquotes, but some users do it with a small font tag or somesuch. Conversely, blockquoted text could be used for other purposes.

I understand that all identifiable information will be stripped out, but will we still be individually anonymous (if that makes sense)? E.g., will all of my posts be attributed to "Poster 42" or whatever, or will they have no attribution beyond the board?

Personally, I would opt in and vote for the participation in the project. I feel that the archived posts from this board would be useful to the researchers of ANCC. The Buffistas are a particularly literate group and I can see how the content and flow of our threads would make a unique contribution. Hopefully we won't lightbulb the process to the extent that it would be more trouble than it is worth to contribute our posts.

Will they be using lightbulb and/or b'cy posts?