Burn the books too!

[jamshundred]

Is this insanity?  Or Exclusionanity?

It appears the largest registry in America ( not the world - the English still own that stat), is steadily moving forward to be exclusive rather than inclusive.  It is obvious to me that neither the best interests of the breed or it's owners are the focus of this group.  And some of us had such high hopes!  "us" were fools all.

Let's see if we can be helpful and add some other suggestions.  Petition the Library of Congress and all public libraries to lock their doors so no one has access to mine any information in those books!

Force Google, Bing, Yahoo, . . . all search engines to cease providing that service so people cannot find or mine information out there on the internet.  Intelius and all the public records companies have been mining and should stop mining. 

Next we have to get rid of the Federal government archives, so no one can "mine" our history, and all of the States simply must remove from their courthouses and internet all their databases of land records, tax records, court records.  Cannot have that information mined.

And just to be safe.  . build a bonfire and burn all the ADCA herd books and Bulletins just to insure there is no "mining" taking place.  

The problem we are facing in this breed, are people who know nothing about cattle associations or how to run them.  Dexter owners would be better served if they would go "mine" some people who do.

Good grief.  

Electronically locking the online pedigree so only members are allowed.  
 
Chad Williams raised issues with individuals mining the database for their own personal use.
The database could be locked up at an approximate cost of $1500.
The BOD decided to leave the database as it currently is and caution the membership that excessive downloading of content without asking the owner's permission to use can be considered an unethical practice.                                                                           (ADCA Bulletin Summer 2015)

[genebo]

The PDCAs went through a similar phase a few years back. Some members complained about getting spams targeted at them based upon their membership in the PDCA. Obviously, someone had mined the online pedigree.

Ironically, I think that one of the people who used trhat mined information was the one that attempted to sell "white Dexters". I got that mailing.

The first reaction from Rosemary was to stop updating the on-line registry, so new members wouldn't be compromised. This lasted for months and caused a lot of consternation among members who registered cattle. Their cattle didn't show up in the on-line registry. I commmunicated with Rosemary about my most recent registration. I wanted it to show up when people searched the PDCA registry.

A solution was made which involved setting up member's accounts in order to see the detailed information about an animal listed in the on-line pedigree. Then the registry was updated. I created my member's account so I could see what the public could not see: One of the details is the A2 milk status. Only members can see that.

[lonecowhand]

I vote Insanity! If you control the information available, you can erase the memory of those inconvenient pesky traditional animals everyone keeps asking for!

[Donlin Stud]

History belongs to everyone and anyone who is interested.
It is not for the elite.


Another human-orientated knee-jerk reaction

[genebo]

PDCA suffered an near fatal decline in membership at around the same time that they made some information available to members only. If it weren't for a brutal attack on PDCA by ADCA, led by a front-page rant by the current president, the PDCA may well have folded. The ADCA attack boosted their membership.

The Legacy Dexter Cattle Registry leads by not only displaying more information about the Dexters, but by making it freely available to everyone.

I sell high quality Traditional Dexters. I want the information about my cattle to be distributed as widely as possible. I put a lot of effort into developing my Dexters. To have a group of people who didn't consult me make a decision to conceal the information about my cattle is like stealing from me. It's a little like taxation without representation.

I belong to the ADCA so I can register my cattle with them. The same reason I belong to the PDCA. I paid $325 in registration and transfer fees to the ADCA in 2014.

That does not include the DNA tests required. I paid $535 for DNA testing for a herd that never exceeded 12 Dexters.

Go to the Legacy site and search my Dexters. You can see the results of every DNA test I paid for.

Go to the ADCA site and you can see the parentage DNA, chondro and PHA results, but no others. Now it has been proposed to hide all that from my potential customers. Not fair! I already feel cheated because they won't display my A2 milk results nor color and dun test results. I paid a lot for these results. I want you to see them!

I'll repeat: I want you to see them! I am proud of them and rely upon potential buyers to use them to make an intelligent choice.

[lonecowhand]

You'd have to ask them what the point of a database is, if the information is unavailable!

Kind of "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, did it make a noise?"

Using this system, they can eliminate the database, and just assure you it's there!

[lakeportfarms]

Well said Gene. I still can't figure out why there is all the secrecy with regards to genotypes however? I recall a bit of the story about you and Wee Gaelic Ms Fermoy with Gus Cothran, but are there any real reasons why the genotypes shouldn't be available as well?

[cascade]

By having our private information including our names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses in the registry, made public, many of us get tons of spam email and spam phone calls from both honest vendors and also some nefarious ones. I can see how SOME people would want to lock down our private detail information to reduce the spam... But locking down the data, would also reduce some of the calls we get from honest people honestly looking for cattle.

I'll live with the spam.

It was very smart for the ADCA directors to discuss this, and make a good decision, which they did.


PS.  I support making all genotypes public and also think we should make chondro-tests public

[cascade]

It appears that the Legacy Pedigree Database is now the only one that is locked down and is ONLY available to Legacy members, while ADCA and PDCA remain publicly available.

Interesting that a few months ago, Legacy folks bashed ADCA for briefly thinking about it, but now Legacy has actually locked non-members out.