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My thoughts on a member database.

I think it is a great idea.  As of right now, we have little information 
about who is subscribed to any of the mailing lists, other than their mail 
address.  Some people might consider that a "good thing".  

Any membership information should be gathered voluntarily.  We should not 
require anyone to add information to the database.  We should warn them that 
we will collect at least the email address that they are using to subscribe 
to a list for the membership database.  We do, after all, consider anyone 
subscribed to any of our mail lists as a PLUG member (makes our numbers look 
really great).

I bet we could get Brian to capture a snapshot of the current subscribers' 
email addresses from Mailman.  We could them mass-email all subscribers 
pointing them to a yet-to-be built web page with a form to fill out as much 
or as little information as they want in the database.  I bet we could even 
set up a mechanism to send new subscribers to get sent there automatically.  
Probably should set up a way to delete data when someone unsubscribes.  This 
is tougher because a person may be subscribed to all the lists but only be 
unsubscribing from one or two. 

As far a web space for members, how much space do we have available that we 
can use for members' pages?  It is one thing to search the database and 
display data about one member, but it will take a lot more space if we set 
aside even 1M of space for every member.  It will take some resources for the 
database web page that collects the data and for the database and for the 
scripts that need to be written.  It will take more space to search and 
display routines based on criteria input (sounds like a job for our PhP 
gurus).

All in all, I consider this a great project.  It would be even greater if we 
release all the tools after it is done.  I am almost surprised that another 
UG has not done something like this already.  So what do we need in terms of 
hardware, software, and manpower?  Who is gonna organize it? How many members 
would be interested in participating?
- -- 
Jim

Freedom is worth protecting

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