Pat and Advisory Board members, Pat Sabin wrote: >I had planned to wait until the elections were over and the new board in >place before writing this letter, so I'll respond to the nominees for CC >board member for the NE-NC region first. > <snip> > >If you only have two candidates, I would support David Young. David >certainly shows a continuing, unstoppable enthusiasm for the Project. >I think he's one of about five subscribers to the NE list, and the only >one who posts on the list. I am sure that either candidate would have made a valuable addition to the Advisory Board. All the feedback about both candidates was positive. Nobody said anything negative about the "other" candidate, except for one person who said that David Young might be spreading himself too thin, which I did not attach any weight to because several of our most active Board members also carry multiple counties and/or states, and seem to manage it fine. There were just many more messages from supporters of Richard Howland. This may say more about the level of activism of the people who work with the two candidates than it does about the nominees themselves, but it was all some of us had to go on. Not being from the NE/NC region myself, and not being personally familiar with either nominee, I decided early on to let the input from the NE/NC CC's be the major factor in my decision. >My concern prior to the election is still a concern. I think the >Advisory Board and the RootsWeb Cheerleading team, often one and the >same, have a tendency to dismiss opinions that are expressed by those >you have called the "Screamers." I'm not sure who the "you" is. If anyone was called a screamer, it must have been on a list that I don't read. I agree that we should not dismiss the concerns of any group of CC's, even those who are in a minority and those who tend to express their opinions in an overly strident manner. >There are many County Coordinators (and State Coordinators) that do not >spend their time in lengthy debates on the mailing lists, but that does >not mean they do not have strong opinions. Agreed. It's just hard to know what their opinions are if they don't express them! We are hoping to work out some way to gather SC and CC input that is easy to use and not overly intrusive on those who want to keep their mailboxes free of politics. Something like an online forum or discussion board, on a non-Rootsweb server. >The issue, as you know, is RootsWeb's hold on the USGenWeb Project. >Please do not make the mistake of believing that only the "Screamers" >and the banned and blocked are opposed to the extent of the involvement. While it is true that the Advisory Board members, both past and present, tend to view Rootsweb either favorably or with mixed feelings, it is worth bearing in mind that their positions were known when they campaigned. The fact that nobody with a strongly negative stance toward Rootsweb has ever won an election for a national office suggests that the majority of the SC's and CC's have opinions that roughly align with those of the board members they voted in. I realize, though, that this may not be a very large majority. One of the drawbacks of a representative democracy is that it tends to exaggerate a small majority. The true spread of opinion on an issue might be something like 55 to 45, but if it doesn't fall into geographically-based camps, then it can get translated into a 100 to zero spread in the representatives they elect! This is the major reason that I favor putting all policy decisions DIRECTLY in the hands of the voters, rather than having the board decide them. The board should deal with implementation, and let direct votes of the volunteers set the direction. >I think many, many county and state coordinators got a wake up call >when the County Cluster pages made their debut. I don't really understand this concern about the County Cluster pages. I'm not dismissing it, I'm just puzzled by it. The County Cluster pages are *very* different from the USGenWeb pages. They are computer-generated boilerplates. They all look identical, to the point of including a link to the Ship Passenger Arrivals database even for midwestern states that have no ports. The cluster pages have no personal touch, no historical or background information, no data except what has been submitted to the GenConnect boards, and except for the links to USGenWeb pages, almost no links to any county resources outside of Rootsweb. I don't think there's any danger whatsoever that visitors will view them as an "alternative" to USGenWeb county pages, and it is clear they were never intended as such. They are horses of a different color. They are so plainly automated indexes to automated Rootsweb resources, that I don't see how anybody could think of them as competition for the same audience. The ALHN pages are *much* more overlapping in style and substance with the USGenWeb county pages. Both are networks of independent volunteers who design their own web pages with a great deal of personal flair and autonomy. As chartered, ALHN focuses on local history with ties to genealogy of local families, while USGenWeb concentrates on genealogy with a smattering of local history. But in practice the two networks are more alike than different. As you yourself point out, many of the pages have been moved from one network to the other. I personally don't view *either* ALHN or Rootweb County Cluster pages as "competition", and think there is plenty of room for as many different sites as anyone wants to build. But it is hard for me to understand the mindset of someone who views the RW Cluster pages as so competitive that they are a reason to leave Rootsweb and maybe USGenWeb to boot, while the ALHN pages are somehow not competitive at all. If we can coexist peacefully with the very similar network of personal county pages, why can't we coexist peacefully with the very different set of automated submission boards and computer-generated link pages? >Many, like me, while not >abandoning their GenConnect boards and RootsWeb mailing lists, are much >more cautious in that relationship. While I have not made any such >decisions, I am prepared at any moment to disconnect my relationship >with RootsWeb if necessary. I believe I am not in the minority. I do have some misgivings about the GenConnect boards, even though I use them. When Pam Carey first introduced the GenConnect boards, they were not part of Rootsweb, and she publically stated that it was perfectly fine to use GenConnect as a "front end" for collecting queries, which could then be massaged into a more formatted presentation either using Surname Helper or by hand, and placed on any web site on any host of the CC's choice. There are advantages to a GenConnect-like system, especially in ease of submission and very low labor requirement from the CC, but it also has drawbacks for browsing. It's good if you have a narrow interest that you want to query on, but if you want to browse the queries for a county and see if it includes any of the 50 surnames you're researching, it is a lot easier to do that in a surname indexed table than it is to query on 50 surnames. I don't share the fear of some CC's that Rootsweb will try to sell CD's or books garnered from the GenConnect submissions. But I am quite uneasy about whether they might attempt to prevent CC's from taking queries submitted through GenConnect, and archiving them in another form such as the "Surname Helper" generated pages, or this format of my own: http://www.best.com/~tpettit/rowan/rowan-q.html especially if the reformatted queries were placed on another server. When GenConnect became associated with Rootsweb, Rootsweb seemed to claim rights to the "compilation" that might imply CC's did not have the right to use it as a front-end for reformatted queries anymore. (Whether they do depends on whether you interpret taking queries one-by-one and doing something with all of them individually to be equivalent to doing something with the "compilation".) I think we should get a clear written answer from GenConnect and Rootsweb what the policy is on this kind of reformatting. >My other RootsWeb issue is the Advisory Board's acceptance of RootsWeb's >banning policy. As sick and tired as I get of all the debating and >name-calling and bickering, we're a diverse group who will express many >ideas and opinions. All CCs and SCs should be allowed to participate >in USGenWeb lists and vote without special dispensation. The existing >situation is, in my opinion, intolerable. I view the Rootsweb banning policy as problematic too. While it's true that every free service claims a right to ban abusers, and they all categorize casting aspersions on the integrity of the service provider as abuse, we would be much less likely to run afoul of this universally claimed "right to deny service" if the service we were using had no potential or perceived conflict of interest. Yahoo or HotMail will claim the same right, but CC's aren't nearly as likely to be using the project lists to complain about Yahoo! So if we cannot get Rootsweb to change their policy about banning people they perceive as "telling lies" about Rootsweb, I would favor moving all of the official lists to a server that was not directly involved in genealogy, if we could find one to accomodate the load without too many requirements. The ListBot that Teresa uses for the Daily Board Show so far seems fairly benign. OneList, on the other hand, has some very invasive policies requiring you to submit to full html banners embedded in your email unless you provide them with a bunch of demographic data that they can use to target ads. Yuck! But, I do not think this is the kind of thing that the Advisory Board should make a decision on. It is something that should be brought directly to the CC's for a vote. >I also see these folks dismissed as radical nuts who obviously can't >spend much time working on genealogy. Again, I'm not a "Screamer" >or a banned CC, but we are all multi-dimensional, aren't we? >.... As I would do in local politics, I want to hear all sides >before making up my mind. I'm don't know who you perceive as doing this dismissing, but if anyone is dismissing someone as a "screamer", I'm sure they are doing so precisely because the individuals in question are *not* disposed to hearing all sides. That's what "screaming" is - holding your hands over your ears and insisting that only your own voice matters. Screamers can exist on all sides of an issue. It is a description of a style of interaction, not of a policy position. I doubt very much that any current board member has ever dismissed someone with a opposing opinion who is willing to state it in a manner which respects those who see things differently. Certainly we do not dismiss concerns about the relationship between USGenWeb and Rootsweb; it is one of the main issues that we intend to work on. In summary, on the issue of our relationship with Rootsweb, 1. I think we should encourage diversifying servers and mirroring web sites on multiple servers, because no matter how good a provider is, it weakens us to be so dependent on the stability and accessibility of a single web presence provider. 2. I think the County Cluster pages are not competitive and pose no threat, intended or actual, to USGenWeb county pages. 3. I do not fear that Rootsweb intends to ever sell our data. 4. I *do* fear that Rootsweb may place restrictions on the use of GenConnect-collected data and queries that makes it much less than ideal as a data-collection mechanism. 5. I think that the Rootsweb policy of banning those who object vociferously and undiplomatically to Rootsweb actions poses serious problems with using Rootsweb to host our official project mailing lists. 6. I am concerned about the public perception that USGenWeb is "part of" Rootsweb, and think we need to do much more to visibly distinguish ourselves as a separate project. As you can see, a mixed bag. The other Advisory Board members undoubtably differ on particulars, but I think most of us have some middle-of-the-road set of opinions about Rootsweb. We are no more a group of "cheerleaders" than the people with a more strongly negative position are a group of "screamers". >My other issue is the power struggle between the Census Project >and the Archives Project. Frankly, the debates on this issue have >convinced me to maintain *all* on my data on my county pages. >This is an ugly situation and needs attention or it will continue >to erode the USGenWeb Project. I think the name-calling and fence erecting that is going on between these two projects is childish and counter-productive too. But I am not at all convinced that it "needs attention" from the Advisory Board. I'm afraid that giving attention to the combatants will will just open up a new round of "he said - she said" accusations. Sometimes the best way to deal with squabblers is to let them work out their differences in a quiet corner. Public attention tends to make everyone focus on the goal of being declared "more right", so that the air fills up with accusations and defenses, instead of solutions to problems. Away from the glare of attention, the two sides may be more open to compromise. (I will admit that I'm somewhat in a minority here. Most of the Board members are more eager to "do something" about it than I am.) >Please consider that many CCs feel this way and are just not >bothering to express themselves. Thanks for "listening." And thanks for expressing your concerns in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. I hope that the silent CC's who share your feelings appreciate the effort that you've made to speak up for them. I hope also that you will find that we are not prone to dismissing anyone's concerns. Teri Pettit Rowan Co KYGenWeb Coordinator http://www.best.com/~tpettit/rowan/ USGenWeb CC Rep, SE/MA Region http://www.best.com/~tpettit/usgenweb/board99.html