West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I'm sorry Robin, my bad. My attempts to lighten the tone undoubtedly failed. :-(
You do seem to have fixed opinions on use of social media and I'm wondering what difference NP exposes about someone's opinions than another platform?

 

With regard to volunteering in general, Ian, I would agree that Heritage Railways are a broad church and there is room for all sorts therein, however, I think the point Tracker was making was in response to Premier Prairie's post (17101) in which PP implied that somebody's comments should be ignored because the writer 'does not currently volunteer'. We've had this discussion before but it obviously needs repeating : people may be unable to volunteer at any given time for a number of reasons. It may be, as "Yorkshireman" has observed, due to ill-health and/or age, but people may have family or work commitments, financial considerations, or live too far distant (even overseas sometimes ! ) to be able to participate in person but that does not mean that they have nothing to offer in knowledge or financial support. "Yorkshireman" is a good example; I know he has, like many of us, worked physically for his favourite line for several decades and, whilst you, dear reader, may not appreciate all of his postings , he has more than earned the right to be listened to and treated with respect, not dismissed by being put in the category 'does not currently volunteer'.
I too, for reasons of both health and distance, 'do not currently volunteer ', much as I wish I still could, but I've done my share of track-laying, building, painting, concrete mixing, engine cleaning,and a hundred and one other jobs, both physical and administrative, for a railway and I am happy to be still able to financially support, in a small way, good projects as they arise.
I guess my point is that many of those who are not currently volunteers are either unable to offer their services at present but will do so at some point in the future, or are the "elders" of the movement, retired from active service, but still involved. They should not be dismissed out of hand.

Mike

 

Facebook may well be 'an utter waste of space' but the WSR cannot ignore the vast numbers of the population that DO use it. These people are their customers, potential customers, volunteers and potential volunteers.
The posting by @mikechant is very useful guidance for anyone using the internet in general and Facebook in particular. I'm not sure why you would find Mike's guidance as onerous.

For those complaining about Facebook 'stealing' your data (even if you are not using a Facebook account), I assume that you never use Google or Amazon? They would never 'steal' your data or store data about your searches, or would they....

Keith

 

You may think that, but I regularly find FB tracking cookies on my machine???? I delete them but they re-appear. Some websites drop them when you visit their site. I do NOT choose to share anything about myself with FB....
Robin L.

 

For somebody with a military background you have a surprisingly simplistic view of security. It is not so much about the information you consciously release, as in your pub conversations, but the information that others can gather about you, as if sitting unobtrusively in the corner quietly observing you.
Many years ago a TA signal unit in Britain decided, as an exercise, to eavesdrop on a NATO exercise taking place in what was then West Germany. Within a day they had the identity and position of every unit, its approximate strength, and the name of each Commanding Officer, together with much other information which could have been used by an enemy. Of course, military communications have got more complex since then but the point remains that we all inadvertently give away information about ourselves.
What many on here do not appear to understand is the way that this material can be used to produce mis-information to be fed back to you or others to influence thinking on social or political issues.
If anyone thinks this is paranoia you need look no further than the recent report of the Parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news which accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections.

“Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day,” warned the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins.

The inquiry was turbocharged in March the following year, with the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal.

The Observer revealed the company had secretly acquired data harvested from millions of Facebook users’ profiles and was selling its insights to political clients to allow them to more effectively manipulate potential voters.

Still happy to use Facebook ?

 

NP is sometimes extremely slow in response. I looked at what the heck is going on. NP says:-

"When you visit our site, pre-selected companies may access and use certain information on your device to serve relevant ads or personalized content. If you would like to learn more, please click here to manage your privacy settings.

I did "click here", and was horrified to see a list of 476 companies. Pre-selected? Pull the other one.

Further to that, I do not recall NP asking me for permission. Under GDPR I'd have thought that I have to positively agree to this, and that NP would have to record the date of that agreement.

Robin L.

 

What I seriously suggest is that most or all of these measures are necessary anyhow for general web use, whether or not you use Facebook. Facebook is the high-profile 'risk' but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Most websites contain some tracking code. And to emphasize, unless you take some of these measures, Facebook *will* be tracking you *even if you never visit it* unless you can somehow vet every website you visit *before* you visit it to check it has no Facebook buttons or sign-on capabilities.

Just to underline this point, my privacy add-on has flagged up *this page* as having a Facebook tracker - 'staticxx.facebook.com'.
I believe this refers to the Facebook 'Like' button at the bottom left of this page. My privacy add-on has replaced the relevant item to prevent it tracking me - it's my understanding that you don't even have to interact with the button in order to be tracked.

So to summarize, I'm not saying people should take these measures in order to visit facebook, I'm saying that they should be already taking these measures if they are concerned about privacy and tracking etc., and *if* they are already doing these things then visiting facebook (without signing up) is a minimal risk.

 

Agreed. I use an ad-blocker and Ghostery, which is currently blocking the Google, Twitter and Facebook connections on this page. I value my privacy.

 

On a restoration front, is needle gunning a thing of the past?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=Q8q3DZB_l6M

 

Ooh that looks fun! Can't imagine it's cheap though...

 

Au contraire.

I have a very clear view about security.

As an illustration, I will happily donate £10 to a charity / railway cause of your choice for anyone who can correctly identify:

(1) My legal client for next week’s case, and

(2) My current military rank.

Robin

 

Or use a supermarket loyalty card? People use them, often for several companies, and are either unaware or don't care how much data they can gather.

 

This morning on BBC Somerset Paul Conibeare was on about what is been done during the closed period and that the line should be reopened on the 30th March https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06zvw5c and start at 1.26. So yes the WSR does use radio to help push the railway.

 

Lmao, first and foremost I have to sign in or register to listen to it!!

 

All BBC news sites have moved to that model iirc.

(That's British Broadcasting Corporation for those who don't like Abbreviations).

 

But can it cope with laminated rust on a wagon underframe?

 

That's what I was thinking.

 

Also, there has just been quite a lengthy discussion about communication and the lack of it. Now, with the internet, there is absolutely no need for a volunteer to leave the comfort of their own home for many tasks, communication being one of them. All the volunteer needs is time and an internet-connected computer, which anyone posting on here must, by definition, have.

 

Quiet innit ?

 

Poster fatigue?