READ FIRST Forum Charter, Rules and Info READ FIRST (Updated 02/12/2

seamus

Welcome to speakers corner. This forum is where a lot of Irish Internet consumers gather to discuss various issues that occur in the Irish telecoms environment. Everyone is free to give their opinion and many give strong and angry opinions due to their complete frustration and contempt at the dire internet access situation in Ireland.

The IrelandOffline forum is one of the only places where a consumer is able to give feedback and get advice and therefore topics and opinions can vary wildly. None of these views are the official views of IrelandOffline. The IrelandOffline committee comes here to listen and get feedback from people and from there we formulate policies.

About IrelandOffline

IrelandOffline was formed in May 2001, and is dedicated to bringing about the next step in Internet access for Ireland. Our goal is to drive forward the development of the Irish Internet infrastructure for the consumer. In particular we want to achieve affordable Internet access for all, be it dialup or via broadband.

We welcome support from anyone interested in the development of internet access in Ireland, be they student, home user, IT professional, business person - anyone who is frustrated with the current lack of affordable Internet access. All are welcome to join.

For more information on IrelandOffline, see the website.


IrelandOffline Website

IrelandOfflines offical website can be found at www.irelandoffline.org. You will find plenty of information on our history, aims and achievements there.


This Forum

Basic Rules:
Don’t [wiki]flame[/wiki].
Don’t [wiki]troll[/wiki].

If you have a question or questions, we would very much appreciate it if you searched this forum before you asked, because it's very likely anything you have to ask has been asked before. To search the forum, use the 'Search This Forum' box provided on the upper right.

Although it may seem so to many, the forum is not specifically an arena for bashing the likes of eircom or other companies or authorities just for the sake of it. This is a discussion forum, not a propoganda page. Any such unconstructive message threads which go in such a direction will be removed without discussion. Complaints about these deletions will not be entertained.

Concerns with the policy or actions of the moderators should be discussed in the first instance by PM (private message) with the moderators themselves or on the Admin board.

By posting here, you agree to abide by the decisions of the moderators in addition to the guidelines above. The general boards.ie rules naturally apply here too ie; "...you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws."


Information to companies

Although IrelandOffline is a consumer organisation, Telecoms companies and ISPs are welcome to participate on the IrelandOffline boards as long as they intend to answer valid and legitimate questions that members of this community have asked.

Any attempt to ’market’ or ’promote’ your products will not be tolerated. If you intend to do this, we recommend you purchase a Commercial Interaction board. (Find examples of this at the boards.ie Commercial Interaction area).

We also draw your attention to the general boards.ie rule: If you are planning to post advertisments on boards, just don’t do it. We will remove them immediately, and then ban you. If you wish to purchase advertising from boards.ie, please contact adverts@boards.ie.



Note to members about media contact

When making contact with the media, it is suggested that people mention the existance of the organsiation IrelandOffline and include the url of the official web site which is www.irelandoffline.org. There are contact details for the committee and we do our best to keep the site as up to date as we can. It also contains a lot of details on our lobbying efforts and gives insight into our work.

There is a separation between the official site and this forum on boards.ie due to the possibility of comments being taken out of context on the forum and the fact that the committee themselves do not moderate this forum.

This isn't a rail against any contact people may make with people they know in the media. The one piece of advice tacked on here is to be fairly clear that you're not actually representing IrelandOffline as anything other than an ordinary member (just like me). You don't have to mention it explicitly - just don't close any mails you send with <name>, IrelandOffline. That can be fairly easily misinterpreted. That's just a note, it's not as a result of anything that anyone's done. Don't forget, we like people to make an effort to get the media interested in the issue.



Committee Members
These are the present Ireland Offline Committee members:

* Damien Mulley (Chairman)
* Gareth Pelly
* John Timmons
* Martin Harran
* Eamonn Wallace
* Seamus Ryan
* Aidan Whyte
* John Hackett



Other Forums

There are a few other forums on boards.ie that you should be aware of. The Broadband forum is for general tech support etc for broadband connections. The Nets/Comms forum is for network and communications specific support and chat.

The mods here have no problem moving a thread to another forum if its deemed to be off topic, some people just may not be aware of these forums. So please dont take this as a dire warning never to start a topic which might be off-topic, if you're not sure go ahead and post here and we can move it if it belongs elsewhere

seamus

IrelandOffLine needs you help.

Over the last few months, representatives from Eircom have given interviews on various newspapers and radio shows.
We in IOFFL often feel that these interviews are one sided and that they don't paint an accurate picture of the current broadband crisis here in Ireland.

Generally speaking Eircom refuse to appear on the same interview as an IOFFL representative
and therefore we don't get an opportunity to refute Eircoms claims or to tell our side of the story.

Therefore we need the help of all IOFFL members to counter this. We have seen in the past how, after Eircom have had a one sided interview in the press, IOFFL members wrote to the editor and journalist in question, pointing out the mistakes and a few weeks later a far more accurate and balanced article is published. This is fantastic and we in the IOFFL committee would like to see more of this happen in the future.

What we would like to do is put in place a strategy for dealing with such events and guidelines and tips for how the members can respond to them.

The following are the strategy we propose to deal with various media events:

Newspaper Interviews/Articles:

1) The IOFFL member who first sees the newspaper event or article creates a new thread on the forum with a link to the full text of the article.
2) The member pulls the most important points out of the article and posts them to the thread.
3) We discuss each point on the forum, gathering information on how we should respond to the points.
It is very important that we gather factual information to support our point of view, such as reports, surveys, etc.
4) We find the contact details (email and snail mail) of the journalist and editor.
5) Each IOFFL member who has the time sends an email or letter to the journalist and editor, taking inspiration and facts from the info we gathered in step 3 above.

N.B. It is very important that we just don't send a form letter or just cut and paste the info from step 3. It is much more impressive when an editor receives letters from different people with different ways of looking at the issue and focusing on different points, but all coming from the same basic ideal. So use the info from step 3 as a resource.

Radio Interviews:
1) If an IOFFL member hears of an upcoming radio interview, please post a new thread about it with details of date and time.
2) If as many members as possible could record it that would be great. (Just to make sure we have at least one copy of it).
3) Create an MP3 of the recording (16k -20k is generally fine for radio interviews), upload it somewhere and post a link to it on the thread.
If you don't have somewhere to upload it, then PM me or email the IOFFL committee and we will upload it to one of our servers.
4) If someone could create a synopsis of the points from the interview and post it to the forum.
5) We discuss each point on the forum, gathering information on how we should respond to the points.
It is very important that we gather factual information to support our point of view, such as reports, surveys, etc.
6) We find the contact details (email and snail mail) of the radio show.
7) Each IOFFL member who has the time sends an email or letter to the radio show, taking inspiration and facts from the info we gathered in step 3 above.

N.B. It is very important that we just don't send a form letter or just cut and paste the info from step 3. It is much more impressive when an editor receives letters from different people with different ways of looking at the issue and focusing on different points, but all coming from the same basic ideal. So use the info from step 3 as a resource.

Guidelines and Tips

---

- Be professional and courteous.

The most important thing is to be professional, all the other guidelines stem from that. A professional well thought out and balanced response will get far greater attention then some language filled rant.

- Don't attack the person, attack the content.

Don't attack the interviewer or the interviewee, it only makes you weaker. Instead attack their points and refute them with well-developed arguments supported with factual information.

- No language or rants.

It just makes you look childish and it will cause your letter to be dumped in the bin.

- Don't use nicknames for companies, etc. (e.g. Eircon, Eshat, etc.)

- Support your arguments with verified, factual information.

It makes you look more professional and knowledgeable, has a higher chance of being accepted and is harder to refute.

- Don't copy.

Form letters just don't impress. Add in your own ideas and views and pick the points that are important to you.

- Do add you own ideas and views.

- If the article/show is corrected later, send the journalist/editor a thank you note.

- In closing the letter, point the person to the www.irelandoffline.org website for further information and assistance.

N.B. All of these tips also apply to the thread we are posting to in the forum. Remember the IOFLL forum is often visited by a variety of people including journalists, companies and government types.

The following two threads are successful campaigns we have before and have some sample letters to give you some idea of how to write such letters:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115313
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114057


If anyone has any other ideas or criticisms, please let us know in this thread:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123416

This will be very much a community effort, everyone's help counts.