Temple trip bulletin board

[wrigjef]

I was just called as a Ward Temple Coordinator. I will be serving under the guidance of the HP group leader. Our ward is about 3 hours from two different Temples, many times people go to the one we are not assigned to simply because it's just as close and we can avoid the DC beltway. Because carpooling is a preferred option, I was thinking it would be great if we had an electronic bulletin board where people could go and post if they were planning a Temple trip and others could go and see opportunities to tag along.

I'm not aware of a church mechanism to do this and don't see one being developed unless someone thinks it's a good idea and this is a huge need elsewhere around the Church. Because I'd want to do this for free and I don't have a place to host this kind of thing, my first thought would be to go to blogger and create an open blog where I could design a front page with instructions then people planning a trip could post and riders could comment on those posts. My initial thought is to leave it public because I'm not a fan of building additional lists and there might be members elsewhere in our stake that could benefit.

My wife reminded me that a somewhere in the instructions I should come up with some wording that says one sister should not ride with one brother unless they are married.

Does anyone see a problem with this?

[russellhltn]

The travel policy can be found in Handbook 2: 13.6.24.

I'd have two concerns:

First, would doing so constitute a "Church-sponsored group" and the additional permissions required by the Handbook linked to above?

The second is knowing who is who and keeping it within just the church units involved. It seems to me such a thing could be used by someone with nefarious motives. So member safety should be considered.

[wrigjef]

I'm sure a disclaimer would take care of the "Church-sponsored group" question, pointing out that these are personal individual trips and should be viewed as simple carpooling. Most anything could be used for nefarious purposes but you are getting me thinking that another instruction should be that if you don't know the people scheduled to be in the car, that you should use the directory portion of the ward or stake lds.org site to identify them. Yet another argument for members posting pictures.

[russellhltn]

For safety, I'd suggest having people use real names, not screen names. Also keeping the site generally hidden from search engines and only findable via a link you hand out. It won't be perfect, but it will help.

[lmcguire]

My thought was less about who else is in the car* and more along the lines of: "Ah, this person is going to be away from their home for 3 hours." (It's not that hard to find an address once you have a name.) I would make it so that people have to log in to the site, and ensure only current members have accounts - then no one can use the travel information for negative purposes.

But that's me.

*(no way am I getting into a car unless I know at least one other occupant well - even if it is for a temple trip, even if I see their driver's license and their name in LDS Tools)

[wrigjef]

If lds tools or the website had such a capability that would be ideal. They would have to sign in as members. As it is I'm trying to figure out how to do this myself for free and blogger seems to be the only option I know of. I don't want to create an access list because it would be rather large and relatively unknown, since it might include members in other wards of the stake.

As for getting in a car to head to the Temple with another member of the Church that you don't know, we all have our quirks, mine is the desire some members have to store hymn books sideways.