[Town Meeting] Fw: Re: Town Meeting Members email address (fwd)

[Brian Rehrig]

I agree with Alan.  His suggested approach also has the advantage, for
citizens, of offering a permanent email address they can use to contact
their representatives.  They don't have to check the website from year to
year to gather up email addresses.

Thanks to whoever's been working on this issue, and I hope it's not too late
to consider this alternative.

Best,
~Brian 

Brian H. Rehrig
28 Academy Street
Arlington, MA  02476
h: 781.646.4625 
w: 781.899.9990 
f: 781.207.0374
c: 617.838.4767
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: townmeeting-bounces at arlingtonlist.org
[mailto:townmeeting-bounces at arlingtonlist.org] On Behalf Of Alan Jones
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 11:43 AM
To: townmeeting at arlingtonlist.org
Subject: Re: [Town Meeting] Fw: Re: Town Meeting Members email address (fwd)

In my opinion, this is not a good implementation. Among other problems, it
will create unnecessary work for the Clerk and Webmaster maintaining the
address base, and it will expose private emails to spammers who harvest from
web sites. If we do this, I recommend that each TMM create a new disposable
address just for this use.

The purpose of publishing TMMs' addresses is to provide constituents with
easy email access to their representatives, which is a good thing. I propose
an alternative in which 21 mailing lists would be set up, one per precinct,
with an address something like Precinct14 at tmm.arlington.ma.us. Then request
all TMMs to sign up and maintain their own private addresses on these lists.
When constituents want to offer their opinion on an issue to their
representatives, they would simply send to their precinct's list address and
it will CC to their precinct's TMMs. Individual TMMs can initiate a private
conversation in response as they choose, thereby avoiding group deliberation
by email. Presumably the list manager would provide a high degree of spam
filtering for the lists.

-- Alan (Precinct 14)

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