-- [ From: Nancy Lohbrunner * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- Hello everyone: Thought I would forward (with permission) a message that went out over another list I belong to. It explains a little about RootsWeb and the two people, Karen and Brian, who do most of the work there, besides having jobs. They gladly take small donations. Vist their web page, URL below. The lines with > in front were written by a Bob Sled to Brian Leverich and the lines without the > are from Brian to Bob. Nancy ------- FORWARD, Original message follows ------- Date: Sunday, 16-Nov-97 10:16 PM From: Brian Leverich \ Internet: ([email protected]) To: Bob Sled \ Internet: ([email protected]) Subject: Re: Brian, Karen or someone who understands what & why? -- Your message was: (from ""Bob Sled"") > Brian and Karen, etal, > > Ok, I have seen enough as a new list manager to say one thing: Thank You!! > What we are able to do (free of charge!!) is mind-boggling to me. That we > are able to serve the "public" genealogy population with a MINIMUM of > problems stuns me. > > I know that if I had some of the problems noted in many of the messages > seen herein I would probably be a little annoyed. However, my reply to my > subscribers would simply be that there are problems encountered when > undertaking such a large project, i.e., RootsWeb. > > So I guess I take offense to people who have an "edge" to their messages. > Unless you people are making millions of dollars from this project, I > cannot see how anyone could get "testy" with you. To be without RootsWeb > in unimaginable to me. FWIW, when we last balanced our books on 15 Sept 97 we had paid something over $60,000 in hard expenses (equipment and bandwidth) over the course of the last year and received something under $40,000 in contributions from users. The $20,000 difference came out of Karen and my pockets. > I may be a "newbie" but I ain't young, I ain't stupid, and I > have managed some pretty large projects. The performance of > RootsWeb with all of its potential "glitch here, glitch there" at > such a high level of proficiency is a miracle to me. It *is* a miracle. By way of comparison, RootsWeb ships substantially more bytes than www.familytreemaker.com and their budget runs over $500, 000/year. What we've managed to do reflects the efforts of all the volunteer Webmasters and listowners, and the volunteer system adminstrators including Karen Isaacson, Ben Laurie, Marc Nozell, Tim Pierce, Barry Zurawicz, and others. Looking at what we've done with $60,000, think about what we could do if most of the 300,000 online genealogists became Members or Sponsors. We could make a serious run at creating online resources to rival the Salt Lake City Family History Library. But that was me taking off on a tangent. Bob, thanks for the kind words ! And thanks to everyone for putting up with RootsWeb's odd rough edge. Trying to operate a $500,000+ dollar Internet site on $40,000 of contributions is a tough job, and we're doing the very best we can with the resources we have available to us. -B ------------------ -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 [email protected] ------- FORWARD, End of original message -------