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Post by James Curgenven on Aug 23, 2007 13:22:57 GMT
If the service is hosted offshore then the Data Protection Act does not apply as the service is outside British jurisdiction. The hardware would be hosted off shore, but the DPA would still apply as only the hardware is owned and operated by an outside source, the forum and it's data would belong to the MGCC which is bound by the DPA. As it currently stands the hardware and software is owned by an outside source.
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patrick
Got the board sussed!
Posts: 68
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Post by patrick on Aug 23, 2007 17:36:23 GMT
So another point against the change! You are proposing to impose the burden of the Data Protection Act. How does that improve the MGF ownership experience.
In fairness I think you will find clubs and “not for profit” organisations are exempt from the Data Protection Act if the information is solely for the purposes of managing the Club (e.g. you are not also flogging the details to online pharma resellers….)
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Post by James Curgenven on Aug 23, 2007 18:38:54 GMT
How does it improve the MGF ownership experience? As it means that no-one is going to suddenly decide to flog all our details off to make a bit of extra cash.
But then I've long come to realise that if a Moderator held up a blank piece of paper and said it was white you'd argue it was black.
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Post by John Ponting on Aug 23, 2007 19:16:05 GMT
I'd be in favour of "shades of grey".
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patrick
Got the board sussed!
Posts: 68
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Post by patrick on Aug 23, 2007 21:27:37 GMT
Because most likely half of those profiles are duplicates, I hardly see the point of copying over duplicate accounts. This also gives us a truer number of active registered users. A very quick checks shows that only 510 of those 835 have ever made a post. Well you could convert those that have posted in (say) the last month or those that have made more than 20 posts. Seems pretty black AND white to me but then first we need the cogent justification for the change and that seems the more challenging task.
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Post by daved on Aug 24, 2007 9:13:12 GMT
If the service is hosted offshore then the Data Protection Act does not apply as the service is outside British jurisdiction. I don't think this is correct. If you are based in the UK you are covered by the UK DPA wherever the data is based. I am not sure about the comment regarding certain organisations being exempt from the DPA but will check. Dave
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Post by greensquirrel on Aug 24, 2007 10:40:23 GMT
If you are a UK based organisation and you collect personal data then you are liable to comply with the UK DPA! Where you store that data is immaterial. Sorry!
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Post by Chris Mills on Aug 24, 2007 16:02:00 GMT
So another point against the change! You are proposing to impose the burden of the Data Protection Act. How does that improve the MGF ownership experience. In fairness I think you will find clubs and “not for profit” organisations are exempt from the Data Protection Act if the information is solely for the purposes of managing the Club (e.g. you are not also flogging the details to online pharma resellers….) Wrong wrong wrong on both counts. The DPA is a GOOD thing. It imposes certain restrictions on what is done with YOUR personal information. It also allows you the right to find out the information that is stored about YOU. That includes every single post you make on a british run internet forum. It also protects you from having your data sold on if you don't want it. and any organisation that holds personal information about you that is based in the UK is bound by the DPA.
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Post by Rob Bell on Aug 24, 2007 20:26:01 GMT
Just to give a quick background to this forum to those who are relatively new, this forum started a number of years ago, initiated by David Clelland, as a way for the committee to be able to communicate with one another over ever greater geographical distances. We then elected to broaden the concept so the whole membership could discuss thoughts and ideas - and thus the forum as we currently know it was born. A couple of years ago, Proboards forced a re-registration upon us - and as a result the original forum was lost, and we had to get everyone to re-register. That was then - when we had probably less than a 100 users. The forum then was still an experiment, and we didn't think that it was worth the register spending your cash on a forum that very few people were then using. Now, the forum is a very vital place. Much larger membership. Does the current forum do all the things we'd like it too? The recent developments put in place by Dave Morris and James Curgenven are making much more of the potential latent in the proboard forum - I love that picture slider for example. But it won't let us post pictures directly onto the forum - which is unfortunate... So if we do migrate this forum, we need to identify everything that we need, and then justify the hastle of moving. I personally feel pretty neutral - the advantages of a free forum speak for themselves, but a paid-for forum gives us more control over the data that the forum collects... The answer isn't that clear cut - and hence why we're asking for your opinions!
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Post by David Clelland on Aug 24, 2007 22:35:00 GMT
I must repeat that I'm not against change and if we do decide to "upgrade" then yes I'll re-register. As Rob said the current forum was setup a number of years ago with Proboards, basically because that was what was available then and it was free. There is much more sophisticated software available now and at a cost we could use it. Remember most people now have broadband which makes the uploading of images faster and I've got to admit that is what most people expect to be able to do on forums today. I should point out that the reason that we lost the information on the original forum was through an administration error on our part and not the fault of Proboards, although they were not very understanding in retrieving the information. If we set up our own forum then we would be able to backup the information and this disaster shouldn't be able to happen again. That's certainly a plus point for moving onwards and upwards. While James is very keen and I have no doubts that he will run any new forum (should we decide to go down that road) very well, the concern that I have is in years to come if he's no longer around will someone else be able or willing to do it? The beauty of Proboards is that it runs itself with little or no interventions by us. Bearing this in mind, I that I think that the poll question asked was inappropriate. I feel that it should have been - - Are you happy with the facilities of the current forum?
or
- Would you like a forum with addition facilities, such as the ability to upload images?
The majority of members don't want to get involved with the technicalities of how the forum is run they just want to participate. I'm sorry to say that the current poll doesn't really tell us what the majority of member want. Considering it's the F Register's members (not the forum members) money that we propose to spend here it would be helpful to give an indication of how much an upgrade would cost. It's my understanding that it won't be too expensive and this information may help people to decide how to vote. Ultimately, it will be the F Register Committee that make the final decision and I think that they should bear in mind that they represent people that have paid their MGCC fees. While others are allowed to "try before you buy" it has got to be MGCC F Register Members that have the last say.
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Post by John Ponting on Aug 25, 2007 8:58:58 GMT
I'm one of the 'you do it for me' group (after many years of running clubs and events for others) and don't really mind which way the forum moves but ..
following on from the clear post from Dave Clelland (thanks DC),
Will there be a cost if the forum moves?
Will this be initial setup?
Conversion?
Ongoing?
Who will pay for it?
Will it be an MGCC forum or F-register?
Can the Register afford to finance a forum?
How much of 'my' MGCC sub ends up with the Register?
I already pay extra for a Register journal, will I soon be paying a Refister sub?
Will we be able to capture the archived threads before migrating?
Is there any guarantee that Proboards won't simply delete us when we move?
Do we really need direct posting of images? There are more than enough album sites for us to use and allow forum users to decide if they want to download/view images. At least we are currently spared the mindless quoting of posts containing large numbers of large images. We may have broadband but ....
sorry, a longer list than when I started.
I'm not against progress - I committed myself to IT and the beneficial use of IT back when Britain went metric and I have worked in IT ever since.
I'm also not sure that the question is the right one but YES I would re-register and have voted that way.
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Post by Chris Mills on Aug 25, 2007 9:17:39 GMT
John, as a webmaster myself I can answer a very few questions. Obviously the ones about who pays I am not qualified to answer, that is for the committee to decide.
Will there be a cost if the forum moves?
Yes there will be a cost to the register for webhosting, There is plenty of free forum software, for example phpBB
Will this be initial setup?
There should be no initial setup fees, the forum software is designed for anyone with a small amount of computer literacy to set up very quickly.
Conversion?
As we will not have any data to migrate, there is no conversion cost.
Ongoing?
There is anongoing cost of about £24 per annum for quality webhosting.
Will we be able to capture the archived threads before migrating?
No, ProBoards won't allow the threads to be migrated, therefore they would have to remain here.
Is there any guarantee that Proboards won't simply delete us when we move?
No, but there is also no guarantee that they won't delete us if we stay.
Do we really need direct posting of images? There are more than enough album sites for us to use and allow forum users to decide if they want to download/view images. At least we are currently spared the mindless quoting of posts containing large numbers of large images. We may have broadband but ....
Personally I think this is a good point. I recently had a severe problem with my broadband and had to revert to dial up for a week or so. There are a lot of people still on dial up, or who browse the forum from a PDA or mobile phone. Direct linking images can be a pain for these users.
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Post by John Ponting on Aug 25, 2007 11:34:54 GMT
Thanks for the comments Chris. I'm not a webmaster (I employ somebody else to do it) but I've worked in IT for over 30 years including Ops manager for a dual site IBM mainframe setup for quite a few years (VSE, VM, CICS etc) and accept that there are always probles in migrating - you lose some, you draw some!
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Post by TimM on Aug 29, 2007 8:36:53 GMT
Personally I'm not too bothered about staying or going - I'll wait and see waht James proposes at teh next committee meeting.
To answer John's questions abotu finance though ....
The MGF Register does not get any money from your MGCC subscriptions - there is no grant to us.
We are funded by regalia sales mainly. Main events mostly about break even on cost so do not dig into reserves. FasTForward is a major expense which is why it is funded by the subscription cost and advertising and again just about breaks even. There are no other sources of income apart from the occasional raffle or similar which is why we are keen for people to buy the main official Regalia items !.
The small cost of maintaining a separate forum would come from this source and there would be no extra charges to club members. Any on going expenditure would need to be discussed and authorised by the committee.
An F Register forum is an MGCC forum as we are part of the main club.
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Post by John Ponting on Aug 29, 2007 10:41:19 GMT
Tim, thanks for your comments.
So, the only current source of income to fund a forum is regalia sales? So if sales dropped we could end up forumless - or looking for a benefactor?
It starts off so simple - don't like what we have, let's have something different.
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