CAPS Minutes, Penile Enhancements and Internet Ignorance

A few days ago, I wrote to CAPS Beat 2411 with this question: "Maybe I'm missing them, but I don't see minutes for your CAPS meetings here. Where can we find them, and why do we have to join a group to access information to your CAPS info? Thank you." Excuse me - before you start reading Mr. Morris's kind reply, let me point something out. First, it was nice of him to respond. Second, while I have been very critical of the CAPS groups in the 24th District for not being up to date on their minutes, it must be said that the 24th is unusual for even having CAPS Beats that have web sites. Most don't in the city; Rogers Park is a bit of an anomaly. But Mr. Morris wrote something that speaks to a major part of the problem: A lack of Internet savvy on the part of 24th District beat web site supervisors. The savvy that every 9th grader has. To wit, he wrote that the reason 2411's web site requires registration is as follows: "For a while, I didn't require registering on the WROGERSPK site. We got hit. Plain and simple. By upping the security, I got rid of the problems. So, both neighborhood sites now require registration. We don't charge for membership, either on the web or at our meetings. By getting you to register, it's not for our benefit. It's for yours. "You're free of spam, ads for penile enhancements, and other nefarious worms, Trojans, malware, etc. If I cut the requirements, we'll get buried by this crap. I belong to around 20 other sites that Yahoo.com hosts. I've watched as several have been overrun by this crud and are now either being taken down and disbanded or the owners have finally woken up and are now requiring tighter security." Huh? This blog, which is nothing more than a type of web site, is "free of spam, ads for penile enhancements, and other nefarious worms, Trojans, malware, etc." Why can't the CAPS groups just post their minutes on a blog? It takes only seconds to copy and paste the minutes into a posting (such as this one). Mr. Morris is well-intentioned, I'm sure. But the "solution" he found for preventing the horrors of penile enhancement ads was overly complicated, unnecessary, and ultimately defeats the purpose of transparency in the CAPS community. My unsolicited advice to Mr. Morris and other CAPS groups: Start a blog. It takes about five minutes to create, costs nothing, is quite secure, and is open for all to see. The full response from Mr. Morris: To: CAPS2411@yahoogroups.com From: "Hank Morris" Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:51:56 -0500 Subject: Re: [CAPS2411] Where are the CAPS Meeting Minutes? Good questions. I ran meeting minutes for 2-3 years. There were four files uploaded every month: monthly agenda for Beat Meetings, monthly agenda for Board of Directors Meetings; monthly Beat Meeting Minutes; and, monthly Board of Directors Minutes. Nobody read them. The amount of file space Yahoo gives us was getting eaten up quickly. By killing the unread minutes, I freed up a lot of space. If people had used the feature, it would still be there. The website is hosted by Yahoo.com. We get the space for free. Because many Yahoo.com forums have been hit by spam and other nasty things, I elected to make registration mandatory. The "bots" used by many spammers, script kiddies, and other malcontents won't work on sites requiring this approach. You may have encountered sites where you had to enter a strange looking sequence of numbers and letters sort of scattered about. This is another way of defeating these all-too-real bots. For a while, I didn't require registering on the WROGERSPK site. We got hit. Plain and simple. By upping the security, I got rid of the problems. So, both neighborhood sites now require registration. We don't charge for membership, either on the web or at our meetings. By getting you to register, it's not for our benefit. It's for yours. You're free of spam, ads for penile enhancements, and other nefarious worms, Trojans, malware, etc. If I cut the requirements, we'll get buried by this crap. I belong to around 20 other sites that Yahoo.com hosts. I've watched as several have been overrun by this crud and are now either being taken down and disbanded or the owners have finally woken up and are now requiring tighter security. Hank Morris Tonight, Tuesday, March 13, is when the next CAPS meeting will be held. 7:00 p.m. at Bernard Horwich JCC. I hope you can be there. --hmm

I can't. You sent your email to me just before 6:00 p.m. Not much notice.