Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00343)

Hi Eldon,

Thanks a lot for your thoughts and ideas for me and everyone else to consider.
I have always completely controlled every decision of what I would put on my
site, which has the very tight focus of only presenting articles from THEOSOPHY
magazine, and which is what I alone wanted to do. At the very beginning I only
contacted them and asked for permission to use some of their articles (which I
have all of on my bookshelf) when I first started the site back in 1998 --
after that there was never any more correspondence between us about what I
would use or how.

Once I die or decide to completely give it up voluntarily, I have let the
publisher (THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY) of THEOSOPHY magazine know, and which only I
brought up as a subject for them to consider and be comfortable with, after I
contacted them out of the blue about the whole subject, that once it is theirs
they can do whatever they want with it -- such as completely dump or alter and
edit any of my own relatively few introductory and other comments on it that
lead-in to the articles, as well as maybe keep adding more articles to it if
someone wanted to take up the task.

Fraternally,

John DeSantis
(Compiler)
http://www.wisdomworld.org
http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting.html
http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/index.html
-------

Eldon B Tucker wrote:

> John:
>
> There are two things that you can do to protect a website. First, you could
> find someone else to maintain a mirror of your site. (All the content is
> copied to both sites, but both have different domain names and website
> hosts.) Second, you could find one or two other people to co-own your site,
> any of whom could continue to pay the bills and maintain the site should
> something happen to you.
>
> In either case, you have the greatest flexibility and freedom of action if
> you do your work as an independent project, not under the official
> sponsorship and control of any theosophical organization. This allows you to
> concentrate on the work that you choose to do, and not have to deal with
> politics, having to do something in a way you don't want or to do something
> you'd rather not do, because someone "in charge" tells you that "this is
> what we've decided" etc.
>
> Organizations do not take initiative; individuals do. Organizations may
> provide funds and resources, but on the Internet, it costs very little to
> have a website (unless there is high bandwidth requirements like with
> streaming video). When a group provides funding, there are often strings
> attached, a "do it our way," and other people perceive a project or site as
> "belonging to that group," allowing their preconceptions about that group
> blind them to looking at the site with an open mind.
>
> I'd see each independent effort as thriving when it free to grow and evolve
> in its own direction, finding a useful function in the world and developing
> its own personality. This is as opposed to an effort to mold a project to
> the personality of any particular theosophical group. Individual, antonymous
> workers are much more effective than more passive individuals that take
> orders well but defer the initiative to others, perhaps a group or
> committee, to tell them what to do and how to do it.
>
> -- Eldon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Compiler [mailto:compiler@wisdomworld.org]
> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 3:26 AM
> To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: Theos-World Thanks to Everyone who Commented on our Webpage
>
> Hi Daniel (and everyone else with theosophical web sites),
>
> Since this may be an important subject for each of us with theosophical
> web sites to consider, I want to share these ideas with you folks just
> in case all or some of you haven't yet considered the various
> possibilities:
>
> I've been thinking lately about what might or could happen to my
> WisdomWorld.org web site if I died tomorrow and I hadn't already made
> arrangements with THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY, the publisher of all the
> articles on my site, or with some other theosophist or theosophical
> organization. I could be wrong, but I was thinking about a worst case
> scenario such as what would happen to it if all of a sudden my host
> provider for the site stopped getting paid. Would this commercial
> company after a few months of non-payment, and no one to call or write
> to in order to let them know this, so that they could either continue to
> pay the bills and keep it running, or pay the back bills and then
> somehow technically make the arrangements to move all of the contents to
> their own site and host provider, simply delete all of the contents and
> shut it down so that no one had any more access to the articles and
> ideas on it?
>
> Because of this I recently called THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY and began a
> discussion about how to go about making sure that all of the articles on
> my WisdomWorld.org web site get to be owned, used, and presented to
> humanity by them if I suddenly died.
>
> Daniel, I just wanted to share this with you and others, as food for
> thought and for whatever it may be worth, in order to make sure that
> none of the very important contents of our various theosophical web
> sites disappear off the face of the earth shortly after we die and move
> on because we hadn't made any arrangements to make sure this doesn't
> happen.
>
> Fraternally,
>
> John DeSantis
> (Compiler)
> http://www.wisdomworld.org
> http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting.html
> http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/index.html
> -------
>
> "Daniel H. Caldwell" wrote:
>
> > Thanks to everyone who commented on our webpage
> > at:
> >
> > http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/hpblinks.htm
> >
> > or
> >
> > http://www.theosophy.info/hpblinks.htm
> >
> > To Morten:
> >
> > I will reply to some of your suggestions
> > in the next day or so.
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>