Problems managing membership data on the Consortium for Language Policy and Planning

[Christina Paulston]

Dear Harold,
	You perform an invaluable  service to all of us interested in these  
issues - do please continue.  And my students are all addicts  as of  
course am I .  Que sigue no mas, as any Peruvian would tell you.   
Fortsätt - as a Swede more laconically would say.  Don't you dare quit  
- with love, Christina
On Feb 8, 2008, at 2:41 PM, Harold Schiffman wrote:

> Dear Members,
>
> If you have tried in recent weeks to log on to our website, or to  
> make a request to become a member, or to have your membership  
> cancelled, you will have noticed some problems.  The reason for  
> these problems is that the server that we have been using for the  
> last 6 or 7 years, "ccat" (webadress http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/clpp) 
>  has been having problems that have led the tech support people here  
> to make the decision to move as many applications away from it and  
> eventually replace it with other servers.  Some time ago, because of  
> the inability of ccat to handle spam, I began sending messages via  
> gmail, and all messages that come through ccat are forwarded to me  
> at gmail (hfsclpp at gmail.com) which can manage spam much more  
> efficiently.  (Otherwise I was getting 250 or more spam messages per  
> day.)
>
> I met with the tech support person yesterday and we have agreed to  
> the following:
> From now on, all requests to add or remove memberships should be  
> directed to me personally at either haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu or hfsclpp at gmail.com 
>    You will no longer be able to access the on-line forms to do this.
> The database we have had on-line, which listed the personal  
> information people filled out when they became members, and which  
> was visible to anyone in the world who wanted to see it, is deemed  
> too vulnerable and too sensitive to leave in that state.
> That membership database, with over 400 entries, will be disabled,  
> and we will try to find a new "home" for it.  I do not at this point  
> know where it could be hosted that would guarantee privacy for the  
> information, so I will have to continue to explore ways to keep it  
> viable.
> Please let me know if you personally wish this database to be  
> somehow available, somewhere, i.e. I need to know the following:
> Have you ever consulted it?
> Do you find it useful?
> Do you think it has ever been compromised?
> Only once in our history has one user become unpleasant and uncivil  
> in messages to others, and I had to ban him from membership. Since  
> then, there have been no problems that I know of.
> The general webpage with information about the Consortium for  
> Language Policy and Planning, at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/clpp  
> but not  the membership page accessible by clicking on "Members"  
> will continue to be available.
> Sincerely,
>
> Hal Schiffman
> **************************************
> N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service  
> to its members
> and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the  
> owner or sponsor of
> the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who  
> disagree with a
> message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
> *******************************************

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