[milton-chat] How to save Milton Country Park with no email address ?

[Paul Oldham]

On 05/01/07 13:40 John Taylor wrote:

> I've been promoting the Save Milton Country Park website to a few people 
> in the village, and its surprising how many do not have internet access 
> or an email address.
> 
> What should these people do ?
> 
> They can maybe sign-up on someone else's PC but:
> Can they leave the email address empty, or can they put something else 
> there instead ?
> 
> Would it be possible to put up paper versions in the Post Office, or 
> Village Hall ?

We are discussing this very issue at our committee meeting next 
Wednesday but I am very concerned about diverting signatures away from 
the web site if a paper petition is started now. The campaign may want 
to use a paper petition to mop up those people who can't sign via the 
Web but if we do we'll want to manage that carefully to ensure we 
solicit the right data from signatories, that we do get back all the 
petitions that go out, and that they are all fed into the database. All 
of that will take time and effort.

I'm also concerned that we won't get decent postcodes. Until I started
validating postcodes I wasn't getting complete or accurate ones on the
web site. Those are *vital* as we want to do targeted campaigning on
individual councillors saying "we have N people in your ward who have
signed up". We can calculate that figure in a blink of an eye if we've
got them in our database and we've got their postcodes. It will take
forever if it's on paper and we'll miss people.

So yes, we will probably do a paper petition too, but it won't start 
until late next week.

Alternatively I may just give people the option not to enter an email 
address. Then they can use any PC to which they have access, including 
public access web terminals. To be honest that's a solution which I 
would prefer as I still get good postcodes, I know I've got all the 
signatories back, and there's no data entry requirements, but it's for 
the committee to decide that I think.
-- 
Paul