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WWLT and oversharing youth info

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:44 am
by atticusewig
Am I alone in thinking that when members are asked
to share the experiences of living a gospel-centered
lives through facebook, twitter, blogs, and so forth
they should really also be cautioned to protect the
youth when doing so ?

I remember some online training that said to make sure
calendar titles for youth activities not to have information
as to places and times, so as to protect the youth from
potential predators.

Yet, I hear no such warning to the general membership
to keep such potentially hazardous information out of
the much more widespread platforms such as facebook
and twitter. Did I just miss that part, or were the risks
not addressed ?

Re: WWLT and oversharing youth info

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 12:50 pm
by aebrown
atticusewig wrote:I remember some online training that said to make sure calendar titles for youth activities not to have information as to places and times, so as to protect the youth from potential predators.
I would guess that you are thinking of the training and instructions regarding the Classic Ward and Stake Websites, which featured a public home page (visible to everyone on the Internet) which contained a list of upcoming calendar activities. To see more details, you had to sign in as a member of the stake, but since that page was public, we were taught not to have titles like "Young Women Camp at Yellow Pine Camp #4". The training never mentioned why, but it's not hard to connect the dots as to some of the potential risks to youth and children if we are too specific.

With the new Calendar on LDS.org, only ward and stake members can see the calendars at all, so I don't think there's any reason to be worried about titles themselves; anyone who can see the titles can see all the details anyway.
atticusewig wrote:Yet, I hear no such warning to the general membership to keep such potentially hazardous information out of the much more widespread platforms such as facebook and twitter. Did I just miss that part, or were the risks not addressed ?
All that is covered in Handbook 2, Section 21.1.22, and nothing said about sharing the gospel online supersedes those instructions.

That handbook section does specifically mention that you should respect privacy laws and not include personal information about others without permission. Further details are available at Internet Usage Helps for Members.