Minutes of 10am 2nd October Project Meeting 2020
Part B
(The video of the meeting and PowerPoint presentation used during meeting can be found in the electronic repository in the members only section of the website)
Present:
Steve Davidson, Carol Stevens Ian Burn, Neil Forde, Stephen Barber, John Wall Christine Poile, Alison Priestley, Richard Brown.
Post meeting note…
This half of the minutes was judged by the meeting to be better dealt with under the remit of the management committee.
Organisation of projects
A quick discussion about the overall society organisation and some more specific website issues about what should be in the members area.
John Wall
It seems to me that we have a thread starting at Facebook, then to the website and then into the aims of the society. What is the website? What do we want the website to do? Which brings us around to membership. And that takes us back to Facebook again. The question is what incentives are there for people to join TADS as a member? This leads on to what sort of data restrictions do we need for website access And then some issues about protecting TADS from legal infringement.
John Wall
We need to put disclaimers on with respect to copyright and GDPR. But at the moment that there seems to be this lack of clarity, really, in terms of what we, as a society, or members of the society want to get out of this and how we want it, how we want to structure things. At the moment, I do not think the way we’re organized leads to particularly increased membership of TADS, you’ve got an increasing membership of the Facebook group. But that is not the same as we heard earlier. And people are getting access to a lot of information, coming from the Facebook, contacts through into the website. And in some respects, do not need to join TADS in order to have access to that information.
Carol
This was my point about members only stuff, you know, tourists.
Christine
I think I agree that access that non-members should have is bare bones, we need to tempt people to join in find and get more interested in what we do.
John Wall
I absolutely agree, I think in the points I’ve sort of made that that my non-members see only the bare bones. But the membership generally sees mostly everything but there may be some case for some sort of high level access to data within the database where there may be some copyright issues or there may be some GDPR issues or something that may only be have access rights for administrators, let’s say, but generally all remember, see mostly everything but non-members see the bare bones. One of the things that I used to subscribe to but do not anymore is the New Scientist. And of course, they keep bombarding me with emails every other day as you would expect. And they have articles, and you click on the articles and you start reading them. And it’s probably the first paragraph and you get towards the end of the first paragraph and then it says “more ….”. and you cannot see the rest of the article without subscribing. So, what it’s done is draw you in and quite often I think to myself, well, maybe I want to subscribe again, because actually really interested in this topic.
Richard
They are not the only ones that the times and Sunday Times does exactly the same thing. I got. I got onto one in the states the other day. I can’t remember what it was just the same thing a little, a little bit more then pay for the rest.
Christine
You could put up a short summary and people who want to read the article then they have to click become a member. That solves the problem of having different membership levels for research searches and things, you pay up, you become a member, you get access.
Steve Davidson
At the moment two thirds of the people are looking at the web site for genealogy information. What we could do is really target them for paying up. We have got all this genealogy information that they are only going to get if they join.
John Wall
And to be honest, that that does bring us a little bit back to the aims of the society. What one view is that actually, we want to make this information available to everybody who has any sort of interest. We do not want to put up restrictions, we just want people to be interested in what’s there. That is on the one side, and the other side is no we’ve taken time and trouble to get this information together. Let’s, make people pay to see this information is to become a member.
Carol
I’ve been making this point when this you know, about this access members only stuff right from the outset, I think, but I’m with lockdown and the way social media and the way everything goes these days, we are getting less and less physical contact with the local community by really using membership of TADS mainly, for their own personal research. So we’re doing a lot of giving, as John has just said, and spending a lot of time researching and doing a lot of giving, but what are we getting back, you very, very rarely will get anybody who comes back to you, with the end result that they have found as a result of using your research, even though they say they will.
John Wall
Then we get into a potential discussion about copyrights. You could do a Creative Commons license, which requires people to share alike, which means they’re required to actually put back into the, into the domain, stuff that where they’re used your research, and they’ve developed it, it all gets a bit legal, and you know, when it comes down to it. This is supposed to be, a society for a bunch of, interested, people with similar interests, and not the sort of a big, you know, organization with lots of processes
Richard
I don’t mind you know, things that I put on the written on the Gilchrist one I mean, we’ve had, it’s surprising how often we get queries about that from the States, and particularly, you know, it’s quite interesting to talk to the people on email and, and that, and certainly we haven’t got a lot more information to give than that. But the one, the one that does bug me slightly is the is the zoom talks that we’re letting you all and sundry into these talks for which we’re paying the speakers quite, quite reasonably, and we, if it was up in the hall, we’d be knocking them for three quid each to come in. But we’re not. We’re not getting that sort of return on it.
Steve Davidson
This is not happening because I cannot implement website membership. I’ve got to have a membership list. And I’m doing that as fast as I can. It has turned out to be difficult because half our members do not have email addresses and membership lists, I have been given do not agree.
John Wall
Are you saying prior to COVID, and everybody who turned up for a talk paid their three pounds? So there’s one benefit of becoming a member is you get access to free talks on a monthly basis?
John Wall
You’ve also have the ability to participate in what are called historical investigative projects. And an example of that medieval Tadley. But I mean, don’t, you know, there could be a whole range of projects that people would be interested in actually being involved in. And then of course, there’s the ability to share your own source, historical information with others that have similar interests. And it’s all in one place. And it’s a society where, likeminded people, can share stuff in the members area with some sort of protection in terms of their stuff not being stolen and all the rest of it.
Steve Davidson
This is what the web site suggests as benefits of joining at the moment. Access to a friendly and social group of people interested in local history, member only website pages, monthly live talks, member only resources, such as map material in our archive, a project group with a wide range of experience that provides a range of projects for those ones who want to be more involved, ranging from large collaborative efforts to small personal projects.
Chris
I think with the zoom meetings, the problem is we were not sure how long COVID was going to affect us. And what and I think we’ve come to a point now where it is going to be possibly an ongoing problem for quite some time. Now, we need to re-evaluate whether we charge for the monthly fees, and we’ve now bought zoom. So in a sense, it’s a resource for us and we can, it’s not something that we aren’t investing in. So as it’s now a project that we’re investing in, as a whole way of presenting our talks. Now we can need we need to reconsider. How do we go about charging for it’s a membership, get free access, but I think we should go back to charging the three pounds for subscription for the, for the, if you ad hoc attendance
Steve Davidson
The issue is to do that properly on the website, you’ve got people signing in with individual passwords and I am stopped from doing that till the AGM. We could advertise it only to members by email.
Richard
We got potential problems there with it being fed on by people like Basingstoke, archaeological history, you know. Now whether they’re sending forward these things with the How to join the zoom meeting, I don’t know but, but they are. They are a member through Penny Martins administration. We send the newsletter to them for interest point of view, just like putting a poster up. result, as you are saying they’re not actually a member per se.
Chris
Yeah, with the zoom stuff, can’t you have the password protection, you got the can happen? no password or a password? So you can only join the meeting if you if you know the password? And when do you send out the meeting information? You send it out to the members only with the password?
Decision
We’ve only got two more meetings and a zoom talks between now and the AGM, we do need to discuss it as an AGM item in some form or another.
Chris
Why don’t we work on the basis it’s going to happen after the AGM in whatever form that takes? This is where we’re going to go, this is what we’re going to do. And it will be the whole year going forward COVID or not, some will be zoom talks to a wider audience and some will be the whole talks.
Ian
I’m looking at it from Steve’s point of view, setting up a system where you’re only paying for a meeting. Sounds like an awful lot of work behind the scenes.
Steve Davidson
We have done that for the photography society, so that is feasible. I am very conscious that we’re going to have to get people to re-sign up in December. We do not have a real meeting where we can get them signed up. We’re going to have to do that over the web site. I think we need to be very clear about what they get for joining us. And I have to change the website to yearly membership as well, which Carol said we cannot do until the AGM.
John Wall
Sorry, just to clarify yearly membership, is this calendar year?
Steve Davidson
At the AGM we are going to move to joining and get a year membership from when you joined. This is why it is an AGM issue. If you really want me to get everybody to sign up in January, then we are back with the problem. What happens if somebody comes along in February?
Steve Davidson
Before the AGM, we couldn’t change it, we’ve got people signing up for six months. I can’t change it every month. So it was six months initially, and then it’s five months, and then it’s four months, and then it’s three months etc. The website will not really work like that. If we try to get everybody to sign up in January. We will miss all the other people for the rest of the year that wants to join. us.
Steve Davidson
The website lends itself to ongoing membership, where you sign up a year on from when you signed originally. For some people, it’s going to be in January, because that’s what they’ve paid up currently. But for new members, it’s going to be the 12 months from the day that they sign up because the website facilitates that trivially and it will send out reminders for them at the end of the year.
Ian
Can the website offer one-month membership? two month membership, three month membership?
Steve Davidson
There are membership classes, so we could set up as many as you like. Yearly automatic membership renewal is the best way to maximise income.
Ian
That gets around your problem of charging for the meetings, the zoom meetings, you just say you take a one month membership to TADS, and you get access to the zoom meeting, you get access to all the facilities of the Society for that one month. And at the end of which you take out another month or six months or 12 months.
Carol
It is really a main management committee discussion, isn’t it? The website aspect of it, and the access to research and all that sort of stuff. Yes, I agree with that, that comes down to this, this meeting here. But setting, setting the price from, you know, for membership, and things like that really comes down to the management meeting.
Steve Davidson
Yes
Ali
Eventbrite as an option, because they just checked, they don’t charge for free tickets. So if each person who joined up in just in January was given a membership number, when they put that number in on the on the event, it would be a free event, and they wouldn’t cost us anything for those people.
John Wall
We are trying to design a solution; we should define the requirements. The issue is about the frequency of renewal of membership, which we’ve just agreed around this group,
The other thing is paying for talks. We should keep those things separate. And if we say, No, no, we are going to give talks for free for members, we make that recommendation to the Management Committee. Or we say no, for non-members, or sorry, soon, talks are only available to members. Or we say, no, they are available to non-members. we will charge three pounds, or whatever it is for zoom access, and then leave it to the techie people to sort out how to do it.
Let’s try not to talk about how to do it only talk about what we want.
Steve Davidson
Exactly – I do not want to be told how to do it, I need to have the requirements with the freedom to choose the method with minimum ongoing effort.
Action
We have agreed that after the AGM talks will cost non-members £3 (can be changed at the management committee meeting). Members will pay nothing. The details of how this is achieved is left to the implementation team to provide the solution that requires minimum ongoing effort to maintain.
Carol
But that is what they have always done. I mean, the zoom talk is nothing more or less than we have always provided the zoom is equating to a speaker, and a member pays their fee and allowed to come to the hall to listen to a speaker for free. Well, those are the people who normally pay as a visitor and they paid three, they come into the hall to listen to a talk. So yes, they should be paying to have, you know, access to the zoom talks. As john says, that is your problem, unfortunately, and I do not want it to become a burden.
I don’t think there’s any argument about that. I think John’s right in saying that we’ve got tied up with the web of seeing how it’s implemented. I mean, the zoom talk equates to a visitor coming to the hall and paying three pounds. There’s no different than coming in the hall and listening for three pounds.
Steve Davidson
After the AGM. We’re charging three pounds for non-visitors and I have got to arrange that. I would quite like a list of things on the website that we want to put only accessible for members.
Carol
Okay, we are back where we started? And at that point, what is going to be accessible to members?
Steve Davidson
Yes. that is exactly what we’ve got to decide at a page level, what are we going to give to non-members and what is given to members.
Ian
As a proposal put tasters of most of the stuff under the main menus. And the meat would be behind this password protected firewall. So for example, if you just take a note, let’s take Roller, you have a paragraph on Roller suitably written so that it encourages people to join TADS to find out more.
Steve Davidson
Okay to do that. I can’t do globally until we get everybody enrolled on the website.
Ian
Sorry, how do you mean enrolled on the website?
Steve Davidson
What you’re talking about is every person has an individual password.
Ian
I don’t think so. I mean, well, it could be it could be HenryL (sic)
Steve Davidson
There are three problems with that; you have a problem that anybody who joins for a short while will continue to have access afterwards. Secondly, without individual passwords, we cannot have the proposed different access levels. The final, more subtle reason is that if you have any link into the members area, search engines will find it and allow access via the search engine, bypassing HenryL.
Carol
I just asked what happens in the Basingstoke Archaelogical.
Steve Davidson
I can tell you what happens in most web sites. When you sign up, you have to get a password, that you use every time.
Chris
Can we set it up? So they get a password that they then have to change to their own password?
Steve Davidson
That is already set up and ready to go. Now, the problem is, if we do that, you will block out everybody who has not got a password. We have to make sure that the current members all have a password.
Christine
Can you use the same password for everybody and say, actually, you have got to change it to your own password, and then cancel that password after everybody signed in,
Steve Davidson
You can define this initial password. So for each person, we can make it anything we want. And tell them they can change it.
Christine
If they have to change it, we can use the same for this January block, which is the big one. We can say right, you’ve all got to change and then keep that password alive for the January block to sign on and then kill the password you’ve given them. Because they should have changed it to the password that we’ve said to do your own password.
Steve Davidson
I can send out passwords to everybody. Once I’ve got a membership list with emails. About half a our members seem to have no email addresses.
Richard
There is only to be two or three.
Steve Davidson
Okay, on the list that Christine sent me it was half of them
Richard
And the other way is one organization I belong to they send out each year after you repay, they send out a new double password for use. Yes, it does mean that I can never get into their site without thinking about it for a week, to try and find where the passwords are.
Carol
Can we get back to John’s point about you know, what is the value of being a member and so on and so forth. I mean, John said, and I think is on your agenda here. The basically you know, is know, what are we what are we offering as a society to the members.
Richard
Well guess what Steve showed earlier on that was pretty good.
Carol
Can I come back to you and your point about this circular route back to?
John Wall
What we have at the moment is we have a lot of interest, a lot of interest as interest being generated through social media, you know, of the existence of the society. And what’s what, what data the society has, like Steve says, it’s a lot of genealogy, interest being shown. But what that does, it’s basically saying that that’s where we were attracting potential members. and they go to the website. Then the question really is having attracted, what incentives are there for them to join rather than just go back to Facebook and move on to the next post?
Steve Davidson
There is a way forward where articles Roller for free to everybody to make our website interesting, and we specifically target genealogy. And if you want genealogy data you need to join.
Chris
Yeah, but why not turn off people who don’t want it if they’re just generally browsing on Facebook? Because it infers that we’re a genealogy website.
Steve Davidson
No, they come for genealogy, and they see an interesting website with articles on it and things. But when they try to look up genealogy data, you need to join. But there will be other things that they need to get that says you need to join. We can do that at the granularity of each page. Well, if we can look at the web site, and try to decide what is going to be in the members area, and what’s going to be generally be available. That would be a really useful thing for me.
Ian
Just to go back, Steve. When you are asking for this information, what needs to be on public display on what needs to be on private display at the moment, all the private information is under one menu. Members Only? Can you go back to the website? Can you have the project menu, which at the top level just has the teasers. And then further down in that same menu, you can put the link to the password protected information.
Steve Davidson
Yes
Chris
Is that something we’re going to discuss on Monday?
Richard
Well, I think, you know, in the last half hour, or whatever it is, 25 minutes. So I think we’ve come a hell of a long way. Extremely useful discussion.
Carol
All right. So you want me to put on the agenda that we discussed the website?
Steve Davidson
Yes. And I also think we need to set up a subcommittee to look after the website.
John Wall
There is a lack of clarity about and that is to do with a legal situation regarding the data that we hold and make available on the website, and your ability and other people to copy it and use it for their own purposes.
Steve Davidson
I got a meeting today at five o’clock with Hampshire Archive trust.That is one of the two major things talking about,
John Wall
I just didn’t want society to get into any sort of legal trouble because people visiting the website are using stuff in an inappropriate way we’ve not sort of provided you know, we’ve not done
Steve Davidson
The copyright issues are mainly pictures. And what I’ve done is I nearly always use pictures from Wikipedia that do have open copyright.
Steve Davidson
I think the other the other thing to protect us is that it comes under the terms of membership. So that we’ve got terms and conditions of membership, we’ve got the GDPR section, because you’ve included that Steve haven’t yet the GDPR section, and they tick to say, I agree to these terms that you can’t actually sign in unless you tick to say I agree with these terms and conditions.
Carol
And we discussed that I thought it had been accepted was going to be implemented. So is it. I’m not sure if it’s one way.
Steve Davidson
I looked at how to do it there is not a trivial way to do three check boxes. What is the function of three check boxes, what do we do if people only check two of them? If the answer is to reject them then that is the same as putting all three conditions in a single set of conditions which they accept. That is trivial to implement and more importantly does not involve storing answers.
Steve Davidson
I should say Terms and Conditions are a significant amount of work, at the makerspace, they are doing that at the moment. Three people have been working on that for a month and a half.
Carol
I mean, it’s backed by concerns right from the outset that we’re making so much work for ourselves.
Steve Davidson
Well, I think at this point that the society wouldn’t be going if we didn’t have the website and resume talks.
Carol
I don’t disagree with that.
John Wall
So is there any way that you know, we were talking about people having individual accounts done? Isn’t there any way when they create an account it just as I think Christine was saying about some tick boxes?
Steve Davidson
The current website is set up so you can’t join unless you agree to T&Cs.
Steve Davidson
We can’t have multiple boxes, unless I start programming in JavaScript. Which is fundamentally wrong thing to do in that If I go there will be nobody that understands it.
Chris
Right. Okay. So basically, they’re their signet, their logo or whatever, they however they enter it is that they agree. And if we find that they haven’t, we just shut down their membership, at any point.
Carol
Back to my worry about making so much stuff available to all and sundry. I know what you said, Steve, about saying that, you know, the only issue is with certain things in the pictures you’ve put are covered by this. But it’s not just the things that you’re doing. I mean, that whole bunch of stuff from by Roller that Ian’s done. And, you know, if you make that generally available, we have to be aware that every single bit of research, every photograph is used, and everything that is on there is is you know, adequately covered?
Steve Davidson
Yes we need to think about copyright for anything that is openly on the website and have Terms and conditions for use of information in the protected areas.
Carol
My worry. I’m worried about making so much stuff available to all and sundry rather than keeping it for our own eventual use whatever. It might be a pamphlet on Roller. Well, by with all the other periodicals we’ve done and things we’ve done. We’ve got copyright folders that say, you know, we know whose photograph it is, yes, we have a letter saying we can use it. And if you start making everything available to everybody, whether they pay money for it or not, is by the way, you are sort of opening a can of worms.
Steve Davidson
Yeah, absolutely anything on the website, we’ve got to have copyright for that
Steve Davidson
That’s part of that’s part of doing the project, isn’t it that if you do the project, you make sure that everything you used is either referenced or you’ve got the copyright approval for that’s quite normal for producing any sort of papers.
Carol
And I don’t disagree with that, Christine. And when we do a project, we do that, but at the moment, we’re leaving material out there for people, other people. And potentially, we were putting more and more and more stuff onto webs to be available for people via the website.
John Wall
I’ve been using some websites for a project that I’m doing, which is not to do history society, but some of the websites that I use for research purposes, they have images and text, that then of course, you can, you know, right click and copy and so on, download, but when you look at the terms and conditions of use of that website, it sets out, you know, the copyright restrictions and so on. The website can actually stop you from copying and you have done all the best it can do is to make it very clear that it’s so doing you are breaking the law. Right. Okay, so I can provide Steve with some extracts of the terms of use from some of these websites. Really, Steve, whether that is any help,
Chris
And that becomes part of our terms and conditons So what we need is a group of people to define what our terms and conditions are. The terms and conditions, we’re going to be what our constitution was, and that was simple and that was it – end of story!
Carol
check boxes, one was GDPR. One was, terms and conditions. And the other one was access to a newsletter, those were what we had, we have already agreed and minuted, that we were going to have three tick boxes.
Steve Davidson
I’ve told you, we can’t do tick boxes. Well, I can do tick boxes, but if I disappear, nobody will be able to operate the website.
Steve Davidson
Yeah. ones that go to any website? They have a set of terms and conditions and you accept them. No tick boxes – Have you been to a website where it has separate tick boxes for GDPR?
Chris
I do but then that’s the kind of stuff that I get into, but yes, I’ve come across it, but signatures fine, or they’re long gone? I’m just saying the website does the law. I don’t know how to get it to do what you want.
Steve Davidson
We can have terms and conditions that you need to. agree to before you join. And we put whatever we want in that But that has to be written by somebody. And my experience is writing something like that isn’t the 30 minute job.
Chris
But I don’t mind putting together some stuff.
Carol
This comes back to main committee decision because membership is management committee, isn’t it? .
John Wall
Steve, I think by the way Terms and Conditions Terms of Use should be on the website. So in other words, if you wanted to find out if you’re visiting a website, you wanted to find out what the terms of use were. So in other words, can I book what can I do with the material that I’m seeing here? You should be able to click on the terms of use thing or Terms and Conditions
Steve Davidson
Absolutely the website is set up to do that automatically. After the previous meeting I did put our constitution on the website There’s a lot of paperwork that we are not doing that most organisation do have.
John Wall
I mean, I don’t mind having a go at some with Steve, perhaps it just see what we can do in the way of putting something together in terms in terms of terms of conditions of conditions.
Christine
First thing should get together and do that, I’m happy to work with John. Because I think Steve’s got an awful lot to be working on. So if you and I could work together on that it will probably make more sense. And then we can present it to the next project meeting or the committee meeting. How does that sound?
John Wall
Yeah, I’m happy to do that. I want to make sure that did everything we do that there’s nothing that we redo that is difficult to implement, but I don’t see that it is it’s just a question of getting some words together.
Steve Davidson
Now, that comes from the general policies. I mean, we should have other policies like health and safety. e.g. what we are doing about COVID once meetings restart.
John Wall
We have to go back and decide what the society is, is about, yeah. Because it very quickly becomes, you know, business organization if you’re not careful. And then you get all the bureaucracy and administration say that which we don’t want clear.
Richard
That has been one of the delights of TADS that we you know, we’ve done what we want without worrying too much about chapter and verse,
Carol
I think you need to consult, we need to consult the British Association for Local History, if we want to pursue other things on that that line of inquiry, because they will advise us as to what we should or should not be putting in place. We are a member of British Association for Local History And they are with whom we have our insurance, and property liability insurance and archive insurance, etc, etc. So they’re the people to consult, if you’re worried about what we should or shouldn’t be putting in place. They may even have standard texts that you use that you just upload, because there’s one for community halls and use of community halls.
Steve Davidson
I would like to say, I think a big issue is all these little projects we’ve got, I’m going to propose that time make a page with all those little things on so that they get recorded somewhere. Perhaps the other question is, should we restart project news?
Carol
No!
Steve Davidson
Otherwise, you look back through the minutes, we were finding out about all sorts of things that are in the minutes, nobody reads them, they will get stuck in the mind of one member. And then when that member goes, there won’t be long.
Carol
What do you mean by project news? It was a hard copy, distribute the distributed A4
Steve Davidson
It only has to be electronic and on the on the website doesn’t it doesn’t have to be a paper copy or anything.
Carol
But isn’t this another job for somebody to do?
Steve Davidson
That goes directly to the role of the Society. What is the point of research if we never record what we do?
Richard
I would say all these things, you know, written up simply if there’s something to write up; it goes on the website.
Carol
And in a way you’ve already done this, Steve, because what you’re doing is putting snippets of things on the website on a regular basis and changing them and making it interesting and adding new bits, like the tidy roll. For example. Isn’t that what you’re already doing by putting these little paragraphs and bits of information on the website
Steve Davidson
I’m finding what’s stopping me doing that is worry about whether or not I can do that, which comes back to copyright and the feeling that everything I do is against the ethos of the society I think if we sort the copyright thing out, and we decide what the review process should be on the website that will help me.
Steve Davidson
So thank you all for coming.
Carol
Management meeting on Monday. Okay, thank you.
Steve Davidson
Actually, we have made a quite a lot of decisions today.
Richard
Well, I think we’ve gone quite a long way ahead, in many ways.