Hi Folks,

I'm currently working on some of the basic-rebuttal translations and every once in a while it would be helpful to directly get in touch with a rebuttal's author to clarify what exactly s/he meant. This should make the translation as close as possible to the original wording. I'm a bit reluctant to post these types of queries in the forums as they are of little interest to everybody apart the original author.

There might be other occassions where "author to author", "translator to author", "translator to translator" or "author to translator" interaction might come in handy but at the moment there is no easy way to do that as we don't know each others email-addresses. I'm wondering how this could be changed, so here are three options I see:

1. set up a kind of email-directory where those of us who want to do this can publish their contact-information here in the forum.
   
2. ability to send notes to each other via a form on Skeptical Science similar to the generic contact-form John already has available. The difference would be that the form would need a drop-down-list to select who you want to send the note to and the recepient's email-address would need to be determined behind the scenes. This obviously would involve some more work for John to set up.
   
3. we could hook up via Facebook where at least some of us already have a presence and make use of the (not perfect but still useful) chat- and/or message functionality there.

So, what do you think?

Cheers
Baerbel

P.S.: One more question - would anybody of you be able to do proofreading of some German translations I have prepared? My fellow translators for German are currently not available but I'd like to get some of the BASIC-rebuttals out as translated blog-posts. Thanks!

I don't mind giving my email address.

We could also set up a Facebook page, if we can control the membership. It might be easier than recreating that functionality here.

Facebook is a creeping proprietary infection (I have a strong opinion about -everything-!).

dbostrom@clearwire.net

re facebook, it is possible to use the facebook API to embed it's functionality in my website but I would need help with making that happen - I have no clue about that at this stage

I was just thinking that you could set up a Facebook group, and control membership so that only the SkS team members could join. Then the email happens (I think) automatically: You don't have to integrate SkS with Facebook. It just means you would have to manually add/subtract members to the FB group.

It's a tradeoff between an ongoing (but minor) task of maintenance, and an installation procedure for setting up a self-maintaining system.

Doug, did you get the email I sent yesterday? If it got lost in transition, you can reach me at baerbel.winkler@web.de.

Cheers
Baerbel

I like the idea of creating a form to email another author.  I was going to suggest setting up a private messaging system for this site, but the form would accomplish basically the same thing.

The way Yahoo Answers does it is that you can go into another user's profile and click "send me an email", if they have that option approved (the user can also decline to receive emails).  It then generates a form whereby you can send the other user an email message without showing his or her email address.

Green Options has a private messaging system whereby you click the user's profile and send them a message, which then goes to their Green Options inbox.

I don't know how much work goes into setting up those sorts of systems, but they work well for maintaining anonymity if so desired, but allowing for easy communication between users.