I'm posting this to Live Journal so I can post it to Facebook, because Facebook doesn't let you post more than 500 characters.Requests for the PDF version of the 2011 Rainbow Guide will not be filled any more. There have been people posting it on websites, in spite of our requests not to. But I have started an online Guide at
www.bliss-fire.com/RainbowGuideOnLine.php. Only people who have specifically given permission will be included in it. All people in it will also be included the paper version that will be distributed at the next July 4 gathering.
Having e-mail addresses laying out in the open for any man or machine to pick-up en masse is not healthy for people's inboxes, and many people don't want their phone numbers known to just anybody either. The tacit understanding has been that the Rainbow Guide would go out mostly to family, and there wouldn't be that many copies floating around, and the newsprint wouldn't last very long. But it is different when personal information goes on the World Wide Web. So the consensus of the people who have been involved with producing the Guide (about a half dozen folks) has been not to put it online.
But this past year we agreed to have me send a PDF file (the selfsame file that the printing company's computer-controlled presses used to make the paper version) to people who have requested thru an email, and only to those who sent an e-mail. Last January someone posted on alt.gathering.rainbow a link to some blog site that had it on its homepage. I sent an indignant reply to that post on a.g.r., and in the thread that followed were reports of even more sightings on the web. At this point I came to realize that keeping it off the web would be like trying to keep one person out of 10,000 or so from signing a permit with the Forest Service. So the barn door is closed, even tho that cow is out, and we ain't gonna do it with the 2012 or any more thereafter.
There have been, since last July, 45 entries submitted thru our entry page that included e-mail addresses. I sent out a mass CC email to all of their authors on January 21, asking if they wanted to be in the online Guide. I said that I would not include them unless I received a reply specifically saying yes. Since then, 5 have bounced and 3 have replied yes. At face value, this means 37, or 82 percent, have told me by not replying that they don't want to be included. It could be that some of these just don't check their e-mail frequently, but I would say that it's not more than a few. (This I would present as an indication of the general attitude of Rainbow Guide submitters.)
But I have heard other people express interest in an online Guide, so here is the 1.0 edition. I would imagine that the people who would want to be in it would include regional focalizers, people with Lightlines, people with facilities for large get-togethers, intentional communitarians seeking new souls, people who want contact with a lot of people, and who are all prepared for any of the problems that can come with openness. The Guide entry page has been modified to include a question about inclusion online, and all new entries will be in the printed Guide next summer regardless of how this question is answered.
This Guide will be updated approximately as fast as new entries come in, and there will be an annual e-mail sendout and housecleaning, and all links will be checked periodically.
The page for making entries is
www.bliss-fire.com/GuideEntry.php.
The information is loaded onto a text file, which will not respond to any JavaScript or any other mischief someone might try to upload. It will be transferred to the Guide's files by a human, with no automation involved, and any garbage will simply be deleted. The e-mail addresses reside on the server in a password enabled SQL database in a fragmented form, and are reassembled into HTML code only when they are sent to your browser. This won't stop something determined to access its contents, but it will slow it down, making it more likely to move on to easier pickings elsewhere.