Members map

[barrie burton]

I notice that the BARCS website has a members map,which indicates the geographic position of each member,would such a feature be useful or even desirable,on our site?It might be nice to know that a person with similar interests was near to my next holiday destination.Is it technically possible on our site ?

Barrie B

[Steve Mansell]

It would be handy for selling/buying stuff.
Steve

[Rob Buckley]

No because data protection

[barrie burton]

How do BARCS get away with it?I also I know that Steve is from Farnborough and that Rob is from just outside Bath,plus you boast, I ve got a reasonable idea where you live.I dont want their post codes and phone numbers displayed.Just to know that if I am on holiday just outside Bath,I can contact you via a PM and call in for coffee.

[Rob Buckley]

Donno about BARCS, I'm not responsible for what they do. We collect member's information for the purposes of running the LMA, and have a legal duty to look after it properly. My location details aren't a secret because hey are regularly sent in the post to every member, but many of our members may not want the rest of the world knowing where they live, and we have a duty not to tell anybody.
A map of where all our members live would come from postcode data as there's no other way of realistically doing it, so that would involve publishing a list of all our member's postcodes on the public internet, and that's not something we can do.
If somebody wants to make a map of where everybody lives based on information that members give to them voluntarily that would be fine and up to everyone involved.

[Tony Collins 1073]

Really cannot see the problem.
Those who dont mind their location being known have already done it - haven't we Rob.
Tony.

[Bob Thompson1894]

Really Tony? I thought he had just got out of the tub....

[Robin Woodhead]

Why not add your post code to the location space in your profile?

[Barrie King]

If we had a map showing just the first 2 letters of the post code that should suffice for the other Barrie's purpose.

[Rob Buckley]

It would be though putting a list of all our members names on the Internet, which is something we cannot do.

[Nigel Cox]

A car forum that I'm an Admin staff on, we have a members map, and we leave it to the members if they want to add their location it's down to them how accurate (full postcode) or just general area

[chris-berry]

Why not create a map and have the number of members by county. That will show the spread by county, or even region but the data will be anonymised.

[Rob Buckley]

Like this?

LMAmembershipMap.jpg (92.58 KiB) Viewed 9599 times

[chris-berry]

As if by magic!

Is/could/would there be a way of searching by county, similar to the BMFA map?

[Rob Buckley]

Yup there certainly is. If somebody wants to set up a google map that plots the locations that members provide voluntarily (as that's what the BMFA club locator is), crack on.

[chris-berry]

Fair enough Rob.