Membership database (was Re: West Side InstallFest)

[Shawn Rutledge]

Isn't there an announce list?  If the membership of this list were exposed
to its members (which I see right now it isn't - only the admin can see this)
then you'd basically have an email list.  Maybe this could be augmented
with a database which maps the emails to some web links.  Every member
could modify this mapping to link the email to a "my involvement with
PLUG" type page, and some software could be set up on the PLUG web
server to optionally host those pages there instead of on members' own
web servers, for those who don't have their own.  Your password for your
mailing list membership should be re-used to grant you access to edit
your automatically-created default member page.  Sounds like a job for
Zope or something doesn't it?

If you separate the membership database from the mailing list, then it
is not self-maintaining, nobody will care very much about keeping it
up to date and soon it will not be.  Witness the shortness and age of
this page: http://plug.phoenix.az.us/membersites.shtml for proof of
that.  See how many links you can still follow.  I believe I sent in
email to notify the web master that my link is way out of date, but
never got a response.  But if members can maintain their own links at
the same time they manage their list subscriptions, then it will tend
to stay up-to-date.  Which means of course that this ought to be a
Mailman feature, ideally.  Every member of any list ought to be able
to put a URL next to his name on the "member list" page.

-- 
  _______                   Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD  ecloud@bigfoot.com
 (_  | |_)                       http://ecloud.org  kb7pwd@kb7pwd.ampr.org
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