Hello folks,
Let me tell you in advance that this post has no intention of hurting anyone. The efforts made by those spearheading the efforts to help Vicki are truly commendable.
Having said that, I have noticed some silly mistakes we are making while trying to help Vicki out.
Here are some as I see them:
1) A home page was created to hold documents related to the case. But why should we put in the address http://hometown.aol.ca/scullyxjw/vb-letters.html the part "xjw". Think about this: yesterday I got someone looking for info on the matter to forward to someone still a JW and could not use the above address, simply because it is clearly an xJW thing.
Solution to this: it costs no more than a few dozen bucks to set up a good domain name and a host server. We could create something like www.helpvicki.com, for example.
2) Look at the article from the Canadian Press. There is no date attached to it. I understand that we don't have control over this, but also look at the Press Release: when was this released? By whom? Today this case is fresh in our minds; two or three months from now, we may be unable to say when this was released.
3) The idea of having that article and press release in PDF or Word format is great for printing. But not everyone will print it. So, let's put it up there in plain html format and in a easy-to-navigate way. I am sure we have people here with web design skills.
4) This is not really a mistake, but more of a suggestion: we have to reach a broader audience. The translation to French was great. But, as it's not hard to imagine, there are quite a few people here who speak languages other than English; we could translate those things to as many languages as possible by volunteers and put links on that website.
5) Another suggestion: since we have good writers on the board, someone could put up there a better article, well written, well worded, which would move and inspire people to action and/or donation.
Please understand that I am not just making a constructive criticism; if those spearheading the efforts ask ME I would be able to help with item #1 and #4 above. After setting up the web site and host server I would pass the UserId and Password to those spearheading so that the other items would be provided by someone else.
Folks, if we continue to make those silly mistakes we may not succeed.
I believe that if we pull together in a less amateurish and more coordinated way we can raise awareness and produce good results.
When the WT feels what we can accomplish working together it will fear a little more.
I will be checking this site in the evening. If you want to send me a private message feel free.
Let's not loose momentum.
What do you all think?
Observador.