) ( ) Good Morning Family! .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . \| |// ...and we even have decaf, | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! \ / ------ This week's Coffee steps away from the normal in that we have family business to discuss. Please read it all and let me know your opinions. Thanks. Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. MyFamily.com vs Ancestry.com vs Rootsweb.com 3. Crosswinds woes If you've been with the family for at least three weeks, you'll probably want to skip the following paragraphÂ… TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Bower[s]/Bauer/Baur/Bro[u]wer lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Bower[s]/Bau[e]r/Bro[u]wer lines or any of the 81+ variant spellings that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. If you haven't visited the homesite of this list yet, you are encouraged to do so. The Bower Family Homestead [a.k.a., the Homestead] is our homesite and the gathering place for much of our information. It waits to join us all in welcoming you into the family at <http://www.crosswinds.net/~bowerhomestead>, or you can use our shortcut URL of <http://embark.to/Homestead>. We also have a newly opened sister site, the Bower Cottage, that we've begun to fill. There are currently only a few names there, but give us time... :) The Cottage is at <http://www.crosswinds.net/~bowercottage>, or you can use the shortcut URL of <http://embark.to/bowercottage>. MYFAMILY.COM VS ANCESTRY.COM VS ROOTSWEB.COM What I'm about to tell you here is going to sound red-flag-waving at best. I am not permitted to give you the name of the person who alerted me as he/she had a harddrive crash and lost all the proof to verify his/her story. However, the gravity of the situation prompts me to tell you so that you can deal with it as you feel needs to be done. Keep in mind cousins that what I'm about to tell you, without ability to prove this, is tantamount to hearsay. However, the recurrence of incidents involving one of the Web's widely-used genealogy sites is primarily what causes me to pass this along as I know it (please note the quotes. They are extracted from the writer's message and are not mine): Earlier this week I received a private e-mail from yet another person who found his/her entire family posted on <Ancestry.com> without permission. According to this person, Ancestry.com had "hi-jacked the information from my web page on Myfamily.com ... which also had ancestors' pictures." The material was also posted on Familytreemaker.com and was also being sold on CD's. "I was told that I had given them permission by uploading this to my web page" (at MyFamily.com), he/she wrote. The message-writer told me the ancestors pictures were entered in a Family Photo contest on Myfamily.com and her entire site's data then turned up listed at an Ancestry.com data base. Replies from messages to MyFamily.com and Ancestry.com regarding the situation said that when he/she entered the pictures in the contest "I had given them permission to distribute them," relayed the writer. The person contacted LDS in Salt Lake "because they were the only ones who had my entire family tree. They [LDS] checked for me and found how it had been done. I did notice the CD's were no longer advertised after several heated e-mail discussions." There you have it, cousins. In light of these allegations, and with so many other people having basically the same problem, I am once again concerned. Are you aware that MyFamily.com owns Ancestry.com and Familytreemaker.com ... and now they also own Rootsweb.com as well? While occasional errors will happen, there are too many occurrences popping up now that cause me to take immediate notice. As with our genealogy, the circumstantial evidence weighed with the factual evidence, begins to build a story; and I'm afraid I don't particularly like what I'm beginning to see as an ending. My concern here lies in the fact that quite a few cousins have been adding a great deal of material to the Retreat at <MyFamily.com>. At least one of the cousins participating there has added her ancestor's pictures to MyFamily.com's Family Photo contest. If this latest alert is well-founded, all the material at the Retreat is now compromised. (You all know how I feel about protecting your/my/our material.) The Retreat coordinator, Vicky Bowers-Gielau, is aware of the situation and has been contacting those cousins who have data there. The Retreat admins will meet there tonight to discuss this situation with the possibility of moving the Retreat to a non-genealogy environment. New memberships to the Retreat are temporarily suspended pending the outcome of this discussion. CROSSWINDS WOES When was the last time you stopped in at the Homestead or Cottage? Did you have problems accessing the site(s)? Did you get in only to find graphics and pages not loading? You're not alone. For the past 2-1/2 months I've been faced with the same thing. I really don't understand what's going on as I've loaded some of the pages and graphics three and four times. This has become a weekly occurrence. I've written to Crosswinds to find out if they're having problems at their end, and "no," they aren't or "we've made the repairs, everything should be okay now." Yet, I continually find things missing. I've received messages from a number of you saying graphics were missing. "What happened to my Bauer/Brower/Bowers data? Did you take it down?" "State pages from the Millenium Project are missing...." "When I click on this link, I get taken to a 'not found' page." (Let me assure all of you ... your material is there, the graphics are there ... all the pages are there!) I found out this week that another cousin who has a site at Crosswinds is experiencing the same problems. Of major concern to me is the fact that pages continually don't show. It isn't always the same pages that are missing, either. If pages won't open, that means your/our/my material isn't being seen by our visitors, and THAT is what bothers me the most. A couple times the house on our front page didn't load. How do new visitors get in if the house isn't there???? My next concern is the final leg of our site fight competition which runs December 7th - 11th -- the start just under two months away now. We definitely need to do something here if we're going to remain in it. All our pages and graphics MUST show up that week. Once the competition week starts I will not be allowed to touch the site at all under penalty of disqualification. And finally, the file manager. It took me two days to upload the GEDCOM update this week simply because I couldn't access the file manager and, once in, was locked out again. Saturday I had about 30 files to upload to the Cottage and again, was blocked from entry. This entire situation is quickly passing the point of frustration and moving on to flat-out dread. So, I've come up with a couple ideas. As before, this is a family issue* and I bring it to you before I do anything. *(New cousins in the last six months please see below the following list for an explanation of this.) 1. I can leave everything as is, continuing to reinstall the pages/graphics and we can cross our fingers the week of the competition that everything will show up. 2. I can leave the site at Crosswinds, however, reopen the Geocities site for the competition only. 3. I can move the site again, this time to a free site at Rootsweb. However, there we'll have those miserable banners across the top of every page. Frankly, given the alert above, where Rootsweb was my first choice it is now my last. If Rootsweb falls into the pits of having material taken from them, I'll have no way to protect all the data. 4. Open our own domain. This was one of my plans for the year anyway, but I'd cast it aside as being an expense I can't shoulder alone unless I can find a good web-host that won't suck my checkbook dry! :) If we decide on this option, will 200 MGs of space be enough? *This is a family issue because many of you have material housed at the Homestead. I will not arbitrarily move our home and your/my/our data around the Web without us discussing it first. You have as much a vested interest in the Homestead's cyberspace placement as I do. If you have other ideas I'm certainly open to them. But, whatever we decide here, we need to decide it quickly. The holidays are coming and you KNOW what THAT means! :) Also, if I move our home, I still need to get our front page ready for the competition. Moving the Homestead will also mean moving the Cottage. So, we're faced with another decision. What to do? I need to know NOW how you all feel about this. If you decide to discuss it openly in the family please be sure to use the CHAT: forum to do so. Use the subject line CHAT: CROSSWINDS WOES. As always, you're welcome to e-mail your opinions to me privately at <[email protected]>. Family ... it's what we're all about. My coffee cup is empty again. I really enjoyed this time with you. I hope your upcoming week is filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'