Hi. I'm glad I found this site. All the AAWA contoversy led me to it. I've been following jwsurvey.org since it started but it has changed. I think when it started with the book promotions from guest writers it began to go down hill for me. I seemed to notice more comment filtering and an increasingly low tolerance for any kind of critisism or disagreement on the part of Cedars. I feel the the community there is being brushed aside and is not an important consideration in the site's agenda. It helped me in the begining with its honest, balanced, and informative articles but not anymore. My comments there will likley never see the light of day.
So I went to the AAWA site when it first went online, while Cedars was neglecting his own site being preoccupied with other things. I followed the whole mess with great interest only to be disappointed and crushed at the outcome. What a mishandled and misspent opportunity to really make a positive difference. Just awful. When the AAWA site came up again after its horrible and embarassing silence I checked it out several hours after it was republished. I read the apology. Below is my comment in its entirety, which was submitted but never posted.
Cedars, thank you for finally breaking the silence and offering an apology and explanation of some things.
After the revised site came up I did a quick review. Within 5 minutes I noticed problems. I'll mention just a few. You should know that at the time of this post (3:30pm USA/est, 4/25/13) there are domain name and content issues that have gotten by you. Depending where you are on the site the domain names vary between jwactivists.org and aawa.co and various internal links are in conflict with your recent revisions. One example: links to your "Mission Statement" still show your old anti-actvist name and promote it throughout the text. Very unprofessional and a major oversight before publishing.
Some quick research a couple of days ago was quite troubling to me on your behalf. Checking with netcraft.com site reports and cbl.abuseat.org it appears that you may have had serious issues due to the fact that you were sharing the ip 50.63.98.1 address on an infected server (http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi?ip=50.63.98.1&.pubmit=Lookup). Your ip address is now changed along with some of your hosting/server/platform technologies, which seems to have resolved this problem (http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://aawa.org). Unfortunately prior links displaying that information have since been updated and I did not take screenshots at the time. No mention of any such tech issues or concerns in your post (apology) above.
I went to the volunteer form page but in light of recent events I had some concerns about the security of your operations. I emailed the webmaster about the security of your form page. Below is that communication in its entirety.
SENT: On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 10:02 AM, xxxxxxx <[email protected]> wrote:
ME: What? <then my quote from form page below>
"Please note: This form system is secure. Your application will be delivered directly to the Volunteer Administrator. You will receive confirmation of its delivery and receipt."ME: I will not provide personal information on any form not showing as secure in my browser no matter what you say. Where is the "https:" indicator in the domain? This does not look like a secure server environment to me. What do you mean by secure?
Please respond - Thanks.REPLY:
"No problem. The website does not process any credit card or financial information or other personal data. The form itself goes directly to the administrator of that program.""If you are uncomfortable filling out that general information form (no personal info such as address, SS#, accounts, etc.) then you should probably not submit any forms to us at all. This is a social group, not a credit card company."
"But thank you for at least considering being a volunteer."
John Hoyle
Webmaster, AAWA.coAfter stating my position you will notice that I was looking for (1) reassurance of the form page security, (2) an explanation of what secure means without https. Had I received such, I might have changed my mind. Instead I got an inappropriate answer with some attitude, and a quick kick out the door.
Your lack of timely response to this debacle of a business launch has left me disappointed and guarded. I don't feel you have really addressed recent problems sincerely, and delt with your organizations relationship to the x-jw community as a whole. Your organization has not yet demonstrated its competence and trustworthiness to me. I thought when you came back online you were going to finally "get it" and and start turning things around. Right now it seems you are all a bunch of good hearted screwups in way over your heads.
Ironically, in their apology they state: "It is hoped that by taking this step now we we will go some way towards reassuring the Ex-JW community that we are very serious about our responsibility to safeguard people’s privacy." And in another post they say that unlike the WT Society, they are listening and welcome feedback because they "Are the AAWA." - Just sickening.
The result? My comment was never posted and I am now blocked. Hummm... am I now, in a strange way, possibly being shunned? No dissenters, no counter thinkers or critics, even those with good intentions are welcome. SO GOODBYE AAWA AND GOOD LUCK - YOU'RE GOING TO NEED IT!