My friends - I generally do not bring you news about RootsWeb, whose servers house some 4000 mail lists, including this one, because I know you all get the RootsWeb Review about once a week, which pretty well covers what is going on within RootsWeb. However, on one of the lists which we list hosts use to discuss list problems and other items of mutual interest, a discussion was started by a few people concerning the tiny salaries paid to a few people who give practically all of their time to the RootsWeb Cooperative(they were complaining - if you can believe it - about them getting paid at all). As most of you know, RootsWeb was created by, and is "owned" by Dr. Brian Leverich and his wife Karen Isaacson, both superb computer people and genealogists. They created RootsWeb and they have funded 90% of it out of their own pockets since its creation. This means that they have a houseful of computer equipment, as well as other equipment in a hub elsewhere, that runs all of these lists, as well as web pages and other items for the USGenWeb - the effort is huge and growing by leaps and bounds. However, their corporate sponsor, Palladium, has disappeared into a merger with another company, and that funding has evaporated. It seems unclear whether any other corporation will step forward to help underwrite these huge costs. In the message which Brian sent to the listowner list, he makes the first mention of danger to the whole RootsWeb concept. He is rarely pessimistic, and if he is concerned, then we all need to be concerned. He finds it particularly depressing that only a small percentage (2%-6%) are helping to support RootsWeb in any way, even though there are literally hundreds of thousands of people regularly using the mail lists and the other web pages and items which RootsWeb hosts. You can see that he has taken out a $25,000 loan just to try to keep the equipment growing with the needs of RootsWeb. The bottom line is that if we, as users of these RootsWeb services, cannot help with a few dollars(and it does not have to be much at all, if we all get involved)in support of this fine group, we are in very real danger of losing these mail lists and literally hundreds of web pages of genealogical material(including the JP Images Page and many, many others)that is today available. Please give this some thought, and see if you can find a few dollars that you could donate to RootsWeb to keep this effort alive. I have long said that Brian and Karen cannot forever continue to incure financial hits in the range of ten of thousands of dollars at a time, and still be able to keep RootsWeb alive. Take a look at: www.rootsweb.com and you can see how to donate if you wish to do so. I urge you to consider it. It is a great investment. Brian's message follows. Let's see if we can make it a merrier Christmas for Karen and him. My apologies for the lengthy message, but I think it needed to be said. -B ============================================================ >Karen and I are in the hole on RootsWeb; not only have we not been >paid anything, we've been paying out of our pockets for the >privilege of working here night and day without weekends or holidays. > >(Just *today* Karen and I took out a $25,000 loan to cover the fact >that the Palladium sponsorship has apparently died with their >acquisition by TLC, and to pay for the hardware we're going to need >to handle the new users we expect to have after Christmas.) > >Just so you fully understand what I've told you above, you should be >aware that in terms of traffic RootsWeb is one of the *top 25* or so >sites on the whole Internet. Folks who can run these sorts of >facilities are absurdly rare (there are a few hundred of them in the >whole world), and senior system administrators at the other "Top 25" >sites generally have salary+benefits+option packages that run in the >$200,000-500,000 per year and up range. > > ### > >Folks should be clear on the concept that the administration staff >at RootsWeb is making a huge contribution to the genealogical >community by essentially donating our time. The fact that each of >us is personally donating services worth tens or even hundreds of >thousands of dollars a year is part of the reason we find it so >depressing that only about 2-6% of our users are choosing to support >RootsWeb at all, and that even among our supporters the average >contribution is only one-third of what "tens of thousands of >genealogists" (the Wall Street Journal) are spending at Ancestry.com. > >I don't think RootsWeb is going to fold anytime soon. But I'd be >lying to you if I didn't tell you that the staff is seriously >wondering whether the community values our efforts enough that >continuing on with RootsWeb makes sense. > >The admin staff wants to give the genealogical community a great >online genealogical library, but we can't do it if only 2-6% of our >users will voluntarily choose to support us. Without more support, >RootsWeb can't afford to buy the servers and bandwidth and scanners >and such that we need to bring online the whole US Census and the >British Birth/Marriage/Death records and all the other resources >we'd like to make freely available to the entire community. > >Maybe Ancestry has it right. Lock up the resources and charge the >users through the nose. Oh well. -B >============================================================