Who polices websites that violate church policy?

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RossEvans
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Distinction without a difference

#21

Post by RossEvans »

daddy-o wrote:Okay everyone here’s the scoop!

I just got off the phone with Cherish at CHQ Membership line. She verified the following:

MLS export function files which can be used off-site (away from meeting house)
The permission to use the export function files for spreadsheets or handheld-computer pertain to these two files PalmFamily.csv and PalmIndividual.csv

MLS export function files which cannot be used off-site
The other files available via the export function Membership.csv, HomeTeaching.csv, VisitingTeaching.csv, and Organization.csv

What constitutes sensitive membership data (aka fenced off data)
This pertains to all the data files which are available via the MLS export function.

...

With all due respect to Cherish and your paraphrase of her paraphrase of church policy, that makes no sense.

The content of the PalmFamily.csv file, which you and she say can be taken offsite, actually includes some of the more sensitive and/or proprietary information (i.e. DOB and chuch member number). It also includes home teachers and visting teachers assigned. All that information is not neatly fielded and delimited, but it can be parsed out programatically with modest effort. It certainly is visible to any human user. Just double-click on the filename and it's all visible in Excel.

About the only content of the HomeTeaching.csv file that is not included in PalmFamily.csv is the quorum and HT/VT supervisor of each companionship.

So these distinctions are really no distinctions at all.

Besides, having served in EQ and HP presidencies, I know that almost every meeting's agenda -- usually at the president's home -- involves poring over the HT list in some spreadheet or other application. If those presidencies can't use HomeTeaching.csv, what the heck is it for?

So I will await someone in my own priesthood file leadership, or some more definitiive prohibition officially promulgated from CHQ, before concluding that the interpretation above is supposed tio mean anything.
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aebrown
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#22

Post by aebrown »

boomerbubba wrote:So I will await someone in my own priesthood file leadership, or some more definitiive prohibition officially promulgated from CHQ, before concluding that the interpretation above is supposed tio mean anything.

If you read the earlier comments on the thread, you will see that there is not a consensus on this topic, and most people take positions that disagree to some extent with the post you quoted. Without raising all those issues again, I would just say that Clerk Support is not designated to give policy statements for all clerks; rather they give information in response to a specific question for a specific unit of the Church. While second-hand reports of what Clerk Support may have told someone may be illuminating or thought-provoking, such reports are certainly not binding.

Official policy statements will come through the Handbook, letters from the First Presidency or Presiding Bishopric, published documents on lds.org, the MLS help file, and messages sent through the MLS system. So given the current official policies (which you should indeed make every effort to be familiar with and follow), I think you are exactly right in following your local priesthood leaders on specific issues not directly covered by published policies.
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