After hardware problems with my laptop and having to migrate all development work over to the excruciatingly slow tower, I have decided to make life a little easier for myself. I've changed the "official" release date for Flamencophile.com to October 10, 2007. I doubt that this will even be an issue for anyone but me. (I'm my own client on this project, after all.)

The basic site is still available in the interim if you want to go ahead and create a account. If you have events or news items, please use the contact form to send them to me and I will post them within a day or so of receiving them. Features like artist's pages and articles are only a couple more days off. Once again, the Universe provides me with a lesson in patience...

Forums Split into Public and Private Zones
I spent hours today on site security and, as a result, made some major revisions to the Forums. After quite a bit of reflection, I decided that there were a number of potential discussions that did not need to be held in the public arena, that debate would be freer on collaborative projects if the mechanics of those were in the members only area. The results of the projects will all be publicly available; the process of putting those together does need not to be.

I also moved the support discussions, announcements, and new member topics into the private forum. This was based on a decision that, again, site mechanics doesn't need to be public. Only members will be doing things that require admin support (things like building artist pages, blogging, posting events, and so on).

Why Isn't Everything Public Access?
It's about site security and protecting personal information. Non-members will have complete access to all public features of the site - public forums, public calendar, articles, news, artist pages. Anything that affects non-members will be prominently posted on the front page; non-members can make contact with a site administrator through the site-wide contact form or join Flamencophile to have full access to all of the site's features. What's the down side? I don't see one. The whole site is free, member privacy is protected, and I've made the registration process as easy to use as possible and still filter out the non-human applicants...

That's the biggest reason that the whole site isn't completely open. It's only a small percentage of Internet users who misuse the Web, but they have a disproportionately large impact. Requiring membership was the only viable way to protect email addresses, personal information, and individual sensibilities. I've deliberately structured the site to minimize problems with spambots and all the other nasties that roam the web. I didn't want to see hundreds of drug and porn ads appearing on the forums in an hour because some robot spammed the posting link.

It boils down to this: To post content or be able to contact individual members, you must be a member yourself. Even then, you won't see the other member's email address, unless they choose to reveal it. I want to be sure members have the option to shield or share their personal information as they see fit. [Note: Artists with profiles do have the option of posting weblinks, emails, and additional contact information publicly. If you are an artist, talk to me first, though. I can help you with ways to cut down on the resultingspam.]

Why Some Upcoming Site Features Require Membership
There are a number of features I'm working on behind the scenes that will strongly encourage community building. That, by definition, requires a certain climate of openness. The site will soon enable Flamencophiles to create their own profiles, invite friends, create interest groups, have private and shared bookmarks and calendars...lots of goodies. These could only be safely done behind a virtual wall.

Splitting the site features in this way is also what will keep this site admin's focus on building new and better features for all of us to enjoy, instead of constantly having to ride into battle against the trolls, scrapers and spammers. I'll still have plenty of site security and maintenance to do without all that, thank you. I want to have a little fun, too!

Privacy Policy and Terms of Use Being Prepared
I've spent a large portion of the day squaring away the privacy policy and terms of use for Flamencophile. Not the kind of thing I enjoy doing very much, but I needed to get that out of the way. It's almost ready to post. I plan to let it sit overnight and then after a final review and edit, it'll go live.

Copyright Issues
In the process of research, I came upon some issues that I will post in the forum over the next day or so for members to discuss. Chief among these is copyright. I'll also be getting the site purpose and philosophy posted quite soon, which will make the intent and mission of Flamencophile much clearer. For now, suffice to say, the last thing I want to do is complicate an already thorny issue.

Content Guidelines
While there will be content guidelines that will need to be followed sitewide, Flamencophile will take no ownership of any individual's content, unlike some community sites. Likewise, each flamencophile that uses the site needs to be sure that they are the copyright holder, or have permission to use the material that they post. The terms of use will clarify all the ins and outs of that. First and foremost, I want Flamencophile to be a useful and fun resource for anyone who loves the art of flamenco. We'll work the rest out as we go along...

Protecting Creator's Rights
Digital copyright has been on my mind a lot lately from another experience as well. I have been dealing with content scrapers on my personal blog, and as the Flamencophile community grows and develops I'm sure that will become an issue here, as well.

I am looking into ways to "digitally fingerprint" our blog feeds and other ways to protect each person's intellectual and artistic property rights while still keeping the spirit of openness and sharing alive. A collaborative learning project - such as I hope to see develop here - really only thrives when people trust and respect one another.

Giving Notice
At this point, I plan to place a standard copyright notice on the site, even though under the Berne agreement that is not technically necessary. It is a mere formality which is unneeded amongst the honest, and one which the dishonest choose to ignore anyway.

The Creative Commons Option
As I do more research on internet trends, usage, and electronic media copyright issues, I am personally leaning towards using a Creative Commons license, specifically the "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported" version. This license allows sharing and use across the internet of materials as long as there is an attribution and a link given. Individual copyright is not violated, as it is a specific grant of certain rights while still retaining ownership and limiting other rights and usage.

Call for Comments and Expertise
There's still a lot more to learn in this area and I'd welcome comments and opinions. If any of you have expertise in this area that you would like to share, please contact me about an interview or writing a column.

Ariel