Facebook Profile
Spacesim's Facebook profile, Oce Spacesim, was created by Ben Paul on March 17, 2010, as a means of getting in touch with as many alumni as possible.
Success Rate
Immediately after creating the account, members of the Wiki Task Force systematically went through old Lisgar yearbooks, added all the Spacesim members to the List of Members, and then attempted to track them down on Facebook. Friend Requests were sent to current members and to anyone who was certainly an alumnus, and the response rate was so great that the profile had nearly 100 friends after only one week. About 65 of these were alumni, and Friend Requests were pending for about as many again.
Controversy
A number of alumni very quickly expressed the opinion that OCESS would be better represented on Facebook by a Group or a Page, even though a note was written on the profile very shortly after its creation that enumerated the reasons in favour of a profile. The primary reason was posted in response to a concern raised by Adrian Archer: "a page only has a passive capacity to interact with people. It wouldn't have gotten us any farther than the group has, and our goal has been to create as wide-reaching a network of alumni as we possibly could. The OCESS group doesn't have the capacity to create such a network of information about Spacesim's past." This is true because the Friend function on Facebook is only active for people, while it is passive for pages or groups. With a group or page Spacesim would have to rely on alumni to find it, rather than on itself to find alumni.
