Unto all good gentles does Lady Tibicen Blackmane submit this plea:

Help!

I am going to make a Domesday Boke for the East Kingdom.  By this I do
not mean a mere phone book, but rather a Census and poll.  I intend to
privately make and retain a Boke which contains the contact
information of every consenting gentle in the East Kingdom, whether
they have paid the tax unto Milpitas or no, and provide an alternative
information source from the Corporation.

My reasons for this are two:

(1) To make a means of contacting those Eastern citizens who will drop
from the Registry's roster or who will be banned from those SCA
happenings which are their main source of information.  Thus should
their help be needed or changes in policy need to be communicated to
them, it would be possible to reach them in the future.

(2) To break the Corporation's monopoly on the mailing list.  Right
now the Corporation, and only the Corporation, has legal right to the
mail list compiled by the Registry.  Even our Crown cannot contact his
subjects, save by their leave and with their help in furnishing that
mailing list.  Should the Corporation, in a fit of future paranoia,
decide that Their Majesties, our chronicler, or even the entire
Kingdom was seditious, all they need to do is refuse to furnish the
labels even to Pikestaff and they will have shattered the East into a
hundred unconnected groups.  Should the Corporation be taken over by
Mundane authorities -- a realistic outcome of impeaching all 6
directors or being forced into bankruptcy -- those authorities might
decide to halt publication of the kingdom newsletters to assuage the
Corporate financial problems, to the same end.  Likewise, should the
East incorporate separately from the SCA, Inc., it will forfeit all
right to use the SCA, Inc.'s registry information.  Thus, I wish to
privately insure that there will always be another source of that
information.

This last is also why I am doing this as a private individual, and not
on behalf of my King and country: any information I provide my Crown
immediately becomes the property of the SCA, Inc.

Thus I need help.  A lot of it.  I will explain briefly what I need,
then I will go into more detail as to what has already been
accomplished and what current plans and policies are.

What I need: I need census takers in local groups.  Multiple census
takers in local groups would be wonderfull!  I need people to go to
events and meetings and all SCA gatherings, especially in areas in
which I don't get local census volunteers, to beat the bushes for
people to submit information to the Domesday Boke.  I and all the
above will need volunteers to help type handwritten information into
email.  I will need people willing to call everyone in their local
Domesday Books, and get them to complete the census over the phone.
And I could probably use some donations to help pay for a nice big ad
(or 2) in Pikestaff.

What I've got: Hopefully RSN, we'll have a heavy-duty relational
database (Sequel, for you db junkies out there) coupled to a mail
daemon.  The idea is that one would be able to email a correctly
formatted submission(s) to the address and it will automagically be
added to the Boke (yes, we're doing duplication checking).  Thus, not
only will net-connected gentles be able to do the Census on-line,
net-connected volunteers will be able to send their collected
submissions in directly from anywhere in the Kingdom.  Don Danulf
Donaldson will be doing the hacking.  I'm providing the email lists
(everything will be @mit.edu addresses), coordinating the volunteers,
doing lots of legwork and typing, and providing the chutzpah.

HOW TO VOLUNTEER: send email to dagoura@mit.edu which says "VOLUNTEER
DOMESDAY" in the subject line.  Including the following information is
also good: your Scadian name, your Mudane name, your email address
(please don't rely on the message's "To:" field).  If you're willing
to be a local census taker, please be sure to tell me which group(s)
you would be able to work in.  If you're willing to take census at an
event you'll be going to in the future, please let me know.  [I don't
know what help Danulf may desire, but if you are a Sequel guru with
time to burn, drop us a note; we might take you up on it.]  If you want
to give money, just say so, and we'll talk RSN.  If you're willing to
help with ad copy and announcement texts, say so.  IF YOU DON'T KNOW
HOW YOU WANT TO HELP YET, JUST VOLUNTEER; I'LL LET YOU KNOW WHAT
THINGS NEED DOING AS THEY MATERIALIZE!

What will happen: your email address will be subscribed to a list for
volunteers and you will receive a (possibly short form-)letter saying
"got it".  I will plow through the hopefully almost overwhelming
amount of volunteering email, and organize like crazy.  At some point,
hopefully not to long after, an email update will go over the list with
what I understand whom to have volunteered to do.  [NB: this list will
NOT be a discussion list of any flavor.]  You'll receive the official,
final version of the census form (in ascii, possibly other prettier
flavors as well), and then we go to work.

HOPEFULLY, you will now have three questions: (1) when would we stop
working on this? (2) what, exactly, will the census ask? and (3) why
should anyone trust this crazy broad with this private information and
what will she do with it?

Answer to (1):
I am hoping that it will eventually become apparent in each region
when we have wrested all the information from it that it can yield,
and then we stop.  I don't mean to do this forever.  BUT, should it
turn out to be viable to do updates simply and with less work, I might
well consider either trying to keep the Boke up-to-date, or passing
the job on to someone else.  But you're not volunteering to do this
for the rest of your life or the Boke's existence.

Answer to (2):
I'm still working on that.  This is a DRAFT version of the questions:

  SCA Name:             [1]
  Titles:               [2]
  Awards and Offices:   [3]
  Region: (ie Barony/Principality/Canton/shire etc)                 [4]
  May the above information be published in an EK phone book? (y/n) [5]
  Mundane Name:         [6]
  Address:              [7,8,9]
  Phone #:              [10]
  E-mail:               [11]
  May the above information be published in an EK phone book? (y/n) [12]
  Will you leave the Society when "pay-to-play" and the rate hike are
    implemented? (y/n/m)                                  [13]
  Have you ever been a paid member of SCA, Inc?: (y/n)    [14]
    If yes: Currently? (y/n)                              [15a]
            Membership number:                            [15b]
            How long were/are you a paid member:          [15c]
  Number of events you plan on attending this year:       [16]
  When did you first attend an SCA event:                 [17]

Answer to #3:

I have made the following policy statement:


                   The Distribution and Access Policy

  I am well aware of the issues of privacy which this Boke raises.  I
  cannot guarantee absolute security, but I will be limiting access to
  this information. 
  
  I will not relinquish the Domesday Boke to anyone save my successors
  and deputies in this endeavor if I so choose to appoint them.

  I will not give use of the Domesday Boke entire to anyone except the
  Royalty of the East, so long as there is such, though I do not
  guarantee that I shall permit such use.
  
  I will not permit any individual, group or institution the use of
  any data, such as the mailing addresses or phone numbers, in the
  Domesday Boke for the sale of commercial products or services; I
  will not permit any other organization or organization's
  representative to use the Boke's data for the purpose of soliciting
  for donations.  I will not permit use of the Boke's data by any
  organization which is not a Medieval or Renaissance "living-history"
  or recreation group.
  
  BUT, I may in the future permit the Boke or its data to be used by
  organizations other than the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc.
  Thus, should the East Kingdom incorporate separately from the SCA,
  Inc. that new corporation may still have access to this contact
  list.  Likewise, any splinter groups which form might be permitted
  access to the Boke's mail list.  All such access to the Boke for
  contact purposes shall be at my, or my successors', discretion.

  No publication of any material in the Domesday Boke shall happen
  without the permission of the individual(s) to whom the information
  pertains.  Submission of information to the Domesday Boke shall be
  considered permission for that information to be included in the
  Domesday Boke, and agreement to distribution and access policies
  here set forth.  Submission of information to the Domesday Boke
  shall NOT be considered permission for re-publication beyond the
  policies here stated, especially the publication of phone books or
  address lists for the general public.  Any such publications would
  include only those records which contain explicit permission to be
  included in further publication.  All such further publication would
  be done at my, or my successors', discretion.

  *End of Policy*

I might decide to publish an EK phone book, and sell it at cost.  But
that is a separate problem, and while I will make provisions for it
now in the permissions I request, I am not planning to do this at the
moment.  Please note that I have set the questions up so that if I do
make a phone book, it will be possible to have one's Scadian
information appear with no mundane information with it, thus
permitting messages to be passed to one through one's local group's
officers and not compromising one's privacy.

In almost any situation where I would permit the use of all or part of
the Boke, I would do so through a bonded mail house (paid for by the
user) so that the user would never handle the data.  The one exception
I might make is to ultimately give the Boke up to the King and Queen
of the East, should things stabilize to my satisfaction.  But that is
only a possibility, though it bears saying.

I hope this convinces you that I am taking the issues of privacy
inherent in this project very seriously.  Ultimately though, it all
comes down to whether you feel you can trust me with this information.
At least, trust me more than the Board, that is.

What I plan to do with this information is as unclear as the current
political situation.  I will compile data into a demographics report,
and submit it to the Crown; I may also make that report freely
available and give a copy to Pikestaff to run as the chronicler sees
fit.  I will probably just sit on the mail list for the time being.  I
will give use of the mail list as I see fit; to the Crown, to a new
Corporation, to a competing group, to whomever fits the policy as I
decide is right.  I might publish a phone book.  I might permit the
set up of a finger daemon on the database, so people who have allowed
themselves to be in the phone book would be "fingerable" by SCA name
on the Internet.  I might permit the generation of a "zipcode list"
which the Corporation claims to have but doesn't really.  There are
lots of possibilities.  

But for the most part, I'll just have it, and be *able* to furnish
this information as I deem necessary.  And that tips the balance of
power just that but further away from the Board and the Corporation:
they may have our money, our possessions, our liability insurance (and
thus our ability to hold some events), and even our collective name,
but if I have this, they can't have *us*.  They will not be able to
have as hostage the citizens themselves and thereby the Kingdom.

Again, I'm going to need a great number of volunteers to make this
real; please help me to do this.  To volunteer:

                        email dagoura@mit.edu, 
             with "VOLUNTEER DOMESDAY" in the subject line

Many, many thanks!

In service to the Kingdom of the East, and to the Society,

Lady Tibicen Blackmane
Mitgaard, Carolingia, East

mka Vanessa Layne
Arlington, MA, USA
                         
dagoura@mit.edu