Co-Dependents Anonymous, Inc. (CoDA)
Meeting FAQs
CoDA hopes that you will find the answers to your questions about the Meeting Resource Center in the list below. If you do not, please e-mail your questions to meeting @ coda.org and we will respond as quickly as possible.
• Why do not my Meeting Updates Show Immediately?
• What are the checkmarks for Phone and Email?
• How can I view, call or email a contact for the meeting to make sure it is active?
• Can I still use the other forms?
• What is the fastest way to update a meeting?
• Should I provide two contacts for my meeting?
• How often should I update my information?
• What happened to the full Listing of Meetings?
• What do I do on this site to join a meeting?
• Where are the meeting days in the proximity search results?
• Why does the meetings in the zip code that I typed into the Proximity Search show up down in the list?
• What is the history behind Online/Phone (Alternative) meetings?
Why updates do not show immediately?
When you use the forms provided for an online update, it sends an email with all of the information to our Fellowship Services Worker. She actually updates the data in the database.
Why doesn't the database just take the information that I put in? Because we do not have a login feature for updating meetings, anyone could update meeting information. Even someone with malicious intent! Therefore, we allow you to change the information by viewing the exact information that is in the database, but then it is reviewed and input by one person.
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What are checkmarks?In the old database and the old forms, there was the option to allow your phone number to be posted for viewing on the website. Many people today will email someone long before they would pick up a phone and talk with them. Therefore, we give you the option of making your phone and email available to the public. If you do not check the checkmarks, the particular data that you do not authorize will not be shown to the public. We never show the contacts mailing address to the public.
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Contacts...It takes two steps to get to the information about the contacts. First you put in your search criteria and click on submit search. When the list of results comes up, you can click on the meeting number/meeting name to see the full information on a meeting that you are interested in. Once this information comes up, it provides a primary and secondary contact with phone and email entries for both, if the information was provided. Often times, a meeting will only provide one contact and may or may not provide a phone number and/or an email.
If after looking at the full information for the meeting you find no contact or you are unable to reach the contact with the information that was provided, CoDA nor its Fellowship Services Worker has any additional data that they can release to you. We do not maintain a secondary list of info that we can hand out upon request. If the information is not there, we do not know it. In come cases, a contact may provide a mailing address, phone number or email that they do not provide authorization to provide to the public. We do not show this information and we cannot release this information to an individual.
If you do not see it! If you cannot contact it! It is not known to us!
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Other forms...Yes, you can still use the forms available on this site. However, these forms are still in revision due to the changes for World meetings. We have the following forms:
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Fastest Updates...The fastest way to do an update depends upon the amount of data that needs to be changed. If you want to change the day of the meetings or one or two bits of information, the fastest way is to send an email to meeting @ coda.org. If you need to change more than two pieces of information, it would be faster to use the online update form.
Mailing in an update form is the slowest way to update meeting information.
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Two Contacts...CoDA prefers two contacts with at least one sharing their telephone number. The provision of two contacts, two telephone numbers and two email addresses provides a greater chance that a new comer would be able to contact you concerning attending the meeting.
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Update Information...You should update your meeting information every time something in the information changes. However, if nothing changes, you may want to send an email to meeting @ coda.org and tell the Fellowship Services Worker that all the meeting information is correct. She will update the meeting update date for you. Our Outreach Committee sends out mailings from time-to-time to meetings with update dates over three-years old.
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Full Listing...
When the new database was created, it was discovered that some of the meeting lists could become very long, especially as you might look at an entire Country at once. Therefore, it was discussed with the contractor who was developing the code and he recommended using the results list to allow the user to preselect which meeting he/she would like to view the full data for. Every attempt was made to provide the most useful data in the results list, but space was limited.
There have been several recommendations of providing the full list as an option. We are looking into ways that we can do this, but have no idea of a timeframe nor idea of the exact method to do this.
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Join a Meeting...
The Meeting Resource Center has multiple purposes: It allows a user to search for meetings, allows people running meetings to update their information and allows new meetings to be added to the CoDA list of meetings. However, the site does not provide a means of electronically joining a meeting.
To join a meeting, simply go to the meeting in person. For Online/Phone (alternative) meetings, use the sign-on information to become a part of the next meeting.
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Meeting day doesn't show up in Proximity Search...
There was a problem with the coding for the search results from doing a Zip Code Proximity search when the code was firt released. The code has been fixed and the meeting day now shows up.
You can view the meeting day and contact info by clicking on the meeting number/meeting group name. This will show you all of the information that is releasable to the public.
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Meetings in current Zip Code for the Proximity Search not showing up first...
There was a problem with the coding in 3rd party software that does not provide a correct sort for large meeting lists from the proximity search. This usually happens when there is more than 25 results returned from your search.
To remedy this, you can lower the distance from your zip code so that the results list is less than 25 meetings or view the whole list to make sure that you see all of the meetings.
Unfortunately, the third party software does not provide a distance within the same zip code. We realize that this can be misleading, but the idea was to be able to view meetings around you area sorted by some relationship as to distance from you. These distances just do not reflect an accurate distance.
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