When SILVER SCREEN OASIS is DOWN ... A Proposal

[Rita Hayworth]

When SILVER SCREEN OASIS is DOWN
A Proposal Idea by KINGME

All Administrators have our e-mail addresses (hidden, of course) in a form of a DISTRIBUTION LIST that is housed on their private e-mail account. When our site is down they use that distribution list to send out a notification that it is down until further notice. Only their USERNAME and our E-MAIL ADDRESS remains hidden from all of us.

They send out a notice every 48-60 hours until our beloved web site is up and running.

Conditions:
Our private e-mail addresses is Hidden
Our Administrators private e-mail addresses is Hidden
In our In-Box only our administrators USERNAME is displayed

Any thoughts on this matter?

[movieman1957]

We don't (or at least I don't) have an off site listing of everyone's email address. Managing that list, given those that come and go, might be too much. I can certainly look at adding yours to a list for this purpose though.

We try and announce it in as many places as we can. We made an announcement on Facebook. (I understand those limitations.) Moira announced it on her website. http://moirasthread.blogspot.com/

This is a unique operation and we are at the mercy of businesses that are paid to maintain the site. When a technical problem happens we notify them and are under their schedule and maintenance priorities. Sometimes with updates there aren't any until we're up. We are looking at that those things where we can have some more control over certain issues.

If I miss anything you can always email me at movieman1957@aol.com. If you're a member at TCM you can send me a PM there as well.

Moira may want to give more details later.

[charliechaplinfan]

I never knew to look on Facebook or on Moira's Movie Morlocks, I will remember this, thanks.

[movieman1957]

If you weren't already Moira's "Friend" on Facebook you may not have seen it. Also, the website is Moira's own "Skeins of Thought" and not the TCM Morlocks, though it is certainly worth reading anyway.

More to come.

[Rita Hayworth]

I read all these posts ... and I'm going to wait until Moira makes her input as well because I learned something new today of which I do not want to elaborate on this post until Moira makes her thoughts on this proposal. Until then, I will be sharing more later on; and you can see why I thought long and hard about my proposal here. To be continued ...

[moirafinnie]

I really apologize for any miscommunication when we went through this recent outage. I appreciate your comments, Kingme, CCfan, and Chris.

Just so members know, they are welcome to email me at finial12@yahoo.com when the site is not online.

My personal blog, The Skeins of Thought (not the Movie Morlocks, which is TCM property) is one of the places that I posted notices about the site being offline.

I also posted on Facebook on my page and made the notice open to any member of the public, not just Facebook Friends.

I also twittered that the site was offline.

I also sent those members whose email addresses I had in my email account at finial12@yahoo.com a note describing the problem and our ongoing attempts to solve this issue.

Going forward In an effort to communicate a bit better in future, the following actions have been done and are being considered. At the end of this post you will find a hyperlink to a poll asking members about actions they would like us to to take in the future to improve communication. The poll will run until Friday, May 25th. Your vote and comments are most welcome in the poll thread which is here:

1.) This morning I went through our member database and added all currently listed email addresses to my list.

2.) If you have an outdated email address and would like to update it to make contacting you easier, please check your account (via your User Control Panel found near the top on the left side on the SSO main screen).

3.) If you change your email address, please let one of our active admins know about this change by private message. [Current admins are myself, Movieman1957 (Chris), or Lzcutter (Lynn)]

4.) We could set up something for members by establishing one of two types of Group Pages for the Silver Screen Oasis. it may help us to communicate better in the future. There are a couple of ways we could do this.

5.) Refer all members to our existing Silver Screen Castaways blog page, which we set up in 2009 during a past technical glitch. That page can be seen here by members and non-members alike.
http://silverscreencastaways.blogspot.com/

6.) We could also set up one of two kinds of Group Pages for the Silver Screen Oasis on Facebook. They are as follows:

a.) A private Group page on Facebook for members only and closed to anyone not a member. Each of us would need to have a Facebook account to be added to that group. Access to posts on that page would be visible to members only.
b.) A public Group page on Facebook which would be open to all members and the general public, with posts visible to anyone, including non-Facebook users.

7.) You can vote below on these proposals and see more about the concept of a Facebook Group Page here .

8.) Please vote once on this concept in the poll found HERE. You have six choices in this poll and are asked to please vote once. This poll will end on Friday, May 25th. Your comments are also welcome.

Again, thank you for your continuing interest in the SSO.

[knitwit45]

Moira, maintaining a huge database of email accounts is a daunting prospect. I did it using an Excel spreadsheet, with 500 names, addresses and email accounts for a class reunion. I'm sure there are better ways to do it now (this was in 2002-2003). If you need assistance, please let me know! (and my lips are sealed, I don't want to know something that you'd have to kill me for knowing! )

[moirafinnie]

Thanks, Nan! I also used a spreadsheet setup to keep track of the email addresses, but our merry band is pretty manageable. I just hope to keep it a bit more up-to-date and find as many alternate ways to keep us informed as possible.

I don't want to know something that you'd have to kill me for knowing! )

You probably know more than I do!

[Rita Hayworth]

Moirafinnie Wrote This:

My personal blog, The Skeins of Thought (not the Movie Morlocks, which is TCM property) is one of the places that I posted notices about the site being offline.

I just bookmarked Moira's personal blog ... The Skeins of Thought and I was thinking about all the Options that Moira has us to vote on and NONE of those options are any good for communication purposes. As long Moira's blog is up to date on a daily basis is good enough for me to keep US informed whether SILVER SCREEN OASIS is down or not.

To me, this is the simplest way to handle it ... and I for one, feel it would be wise for all ACTIVE MEMBERS here to bookmark Moira's personal blog and let Moira take it from there.

I just wanted to say thank you Moira for addressing this problem head on and I have been thinking about it for some time; any thoughts about this approach ... MEMBERS?

[RedRiver]

I was perfectly happy with the way this was handled. I figured, The site will come back up or it won't. Not gonna worry about it!

[charliechaplinfan]

I think you had covered every angle Moira. Some of us are more used to it happening now and again, circumstances beyond our control. I've voted for my choice but I'm quite happy to go along with any of the choices, they all look like good ones to me.

[JackFavell]

I've always been extremely pleased with the effort that the administrators here take to keep us all informed during glitches like this one. This is by far the best site I've ever been on as far as keeping members apprised of problems or updates.

I understand how difficult it is to be without our beloved Oasis, but I find myself very confident when something happens that our leaders here are doing everything they can to get the site up and running again. I am so pleased that they have set up so many ways for us to find out information about the shut down. These problems are few and far between, but the fact that the situation has been addressed quickly and with all members' needs in mind is very reassuring.

Thank you, thank you, SSO admins! You run this site SO very well. Best site on the web!

I'm off to vote!

[RedRiver]

I find myself very confident when something happens that our leaders here are doing everything they can

Don't let congress hear you say that!

[JackFavell]

Congress could take a lesson from this site!

[CineMaven]

TCM CITY could take a lesson from this site!!