Tina and all, Well, I read everyones responses and after thinking about it, had a question or two which may not make me MISS popularity, but someone has to think about the other side of the coin (grin)... As a CC, I have copyrighted all my pages, and belong to 4 other organizations with WoodCoWI pages, and PAY Rootsweb as a sponser for my site. Yes, the info belongs to the sumibtters... But, when you "take" away a county, what happens to those pages? The next cc can't just take them without permission and now you are left with a site with NOTHING ON IT until the new person can get up to speed (Most of us have taken years to get this information we have up there.) Also, what about the person in the middle of a crisis and is unable to contact you??? For example, I am single, and if I were hospitalized, you wouldn't know, because I would be in hospital, not on the internet (grin), and I (my family and friends) probably wouldn't be worried about pages I am doing as a volunteer, as I hope they would be focused on ME. And even then, most of them can't spell computer much less internet? What if our computer dies, in the middle of the night, when everything is closed and wipes out years of work (Happened to me this Saturday night after two earthquakes and a thundershow storm within 8 hours of each other, guess the computer just gave up! Good news is, I am "rich" enough that I could get it fixed right away!) Also, think of our older volunteers, who have heart attacks or long term health issues that flare up on occassion, or loved ones die or become critically ill, or sustain broken body parts. Is the prevailing attitude, well, if they don't response then "screw em", give their county away, fair in all cases??? Also, what about people who bitch just to be bitching??? I have had people write to me and demand that I put up more information on the sites, that I was too slow... I don't think it is reasonable to expect us to have quotas on how much information we put up or how often. We are here to help promote FREE genealogy, not be unpaid slaves. Some cc's are fortunate, like Portage county whose volunteers have submitted massive amounts of information, and when they query, give a page of information on their ancestor and ask for others to contact them if they want even more information. Then, there are CCs with counties like Wood, well, they expect me to do EVERYTHING, and provide nothing... I get comments like please send me information on all SMITH surnames to include birth, death, marriages, census and immigration information... (I swear this is true!!! And I hear some of you cc's laughing out loud, cause you get them too...) My suggestion is quite simple, Tina. You are the most reasonable and fair minded person. You know the majority of us CCs and therefore are the best qualified to know who the slackers are and who the workers are... I think that most of us count on that fairness... But part of the problem we encounter, is that on the internet, if our server goes down, we are operating in the dark... That is, NO ONE can contact us, as they don't have our mailing address or phone number... And we can't contact you, cause we don't have your mailing address or phone number. Another part of the problem, is that there is no set policy, so whatever you do do, someone is going to be upset and angry... Instead of rehashing this over and over, how about we take a vote to add a policy to our page guidelines at http://www.rootsweb.com/~wigenweb/volunteer.html Whatever we decide as a group, would then be policy and your life would be easier when making determinations, as it would be the policy. Now, here are my suggestions for consideration by all the other cc's: 1) Require that to be a cc, we had to give our mailing address and phone number as an alternate means of communication to the SC, and update them as they change. 2) In the event our sites were dormant for a period of three months, and no communication was made to the SC, that cc would forfeit rights to the county(s) in question. These are just my suggestions, which should be discussed and if it sounds like a good idea, then vote on it. Last I counted, there are 72 counties, so a simple majority would be that 37 counties agree a policy should be added to the guidelines... Just my thoughts. R/S MAK --- WIGEN-D-request@rootsweb.com wrote: ===== =========================== MAK = "Mar sea ah Ann Keel" MAKs Sites http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwood/links/MAK.html =========================== __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Hi All, Me again, Correct me if I am wrong, but I got the impression that this wasn't just a brief attempt at contacting these CC's, right? I am assuming these sites have sat idle for many, many months? Even looking at the worse case scenario here, is it feasible that after being off the computer for that long or ill or whatever the case may be that a CC is going to worry about the county? I don't have a problem giving my snail mail address or even my phone number for that fact, but here is the problem I would encounter. Should my computer blow up and I not be able to get on-line and a few months go by and let's say Tina called my house. I stand a snowballs chance in hell of ever receiving that message, unless I am lucky enough to have her get the answering machine and then of course I would have to get the message before my oldest boys. I have two teens in my house and a third coming, I have worked long and hard to get them to remember to give me messages, they are now to the point that if it is a friend of mine, and they recognize the name, I stand a better chance of them remembering to tell me of a phone call. Just last week I was lucky enough to finally obtain a message my oldest son wrote down a little more then 3 months ago from the insurance company seeking additional information on a claim. He happened to be cleaning out his backpack and found this. See my point? I understand the complainers also. People who need to really get a life. I had one go so far one time to be contacting the CC for Manitowoc county asking if she had any influence over me to get me to put more stuff up on Calumet county. Calumet is nearly as small a county as you can get, you can almost spit from one side of the county and reach the other. There just isn't a whole lot of info out there as opposed to Sheboygan county. I have traveled to the libraries in Calumet county, I have tried working with the R. of D. to obtain the vital indexes, it has just been a nightmare. Unlike Sheboygan which currently carries over 900+ pages of information, my little Calumet has a mere 184 pages. So, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Tina has heard alot of complaining about my little Calumet, but at least I respond and I think that is the issue here. One more point before I close this boring letter, if the person was unable to receive their e-mail, broken computer, hospital, whatever the case may be, wouldn't the e-mail pile to the point of bouncing? We have two internet accounts here, the "kids" computer is old and on it's last leg, my husband's e-mail wasn't able to be accessed for more then 30 days and it bounced bigtime. Tina didn't say she was getting returned mail that was bouncing. Can I ask how many counties and which ones we are talking about this round? Oh, one more thing, MAK, let's face it, you have never been Miss Popularity<VBG>, as for me, I am Mrs. Complainer, Debie Blindauer Sheboygan & Calumet Counties