From merope@Radix.Net Mon Jan 24 11:59:43 2000 Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 11:59:42 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Vaudeville in a dark house...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Sunday 23 January 2000: Joe Zsedeny says "When we get a historian in place it will be the responsibility of all the Board members to ensure the appointed individual provides an unbiased version of our history." He feels that it is the Board's important duty to select an unbiased person and that there must be several individuals in the project with the training and experience to do the job. He notes "the people in the best position to know that is our State Coordinators. I am sure that Tim will ask them when the time comes." Ginger Hayes asks Rich if he has any specific things the Board should implement and notes that historians' duties commonly consist of recording events as they occur, but "Since the historian we appoint will also be charged with going back to the project's inception and bringing the history up to date some general guidelines would be in order." Joy Fisher states that since there have been many "flame wars" among old-timers over their "selective memory" of project history, "the historian should be someone who can to resolve these varying views and in a fair and impartial manner." Jim Powell points out that "History is one of those plastic things that moves towards the ideas and values of those in power. History is also a divisive issue." He notes that even those that were there do not view project history identically, so how can anyone possibly divine the true version. He also says, "Is this history documented anywhere by anything other than privately held emails? Is there anything to base this history on that stands up to your standards on what you would base your genealogy on?" Tim Stowell says that he was hoping that in addition to a Historian for the project at-large the states organizations could be persuaded to send in their individual histories. He says "this would give credit to the various folks who have been State Coordinators for each state along with the approximate times that they headed specific projects. Some of these folk are no longer with us be it through death or moving on to other avenues of interest." [Oh good, Tim. You going to tell us how you became SC of Georgia?] Tina Vickery reminds the Board that they are all genealogists and to work backward from the present. She says "It is very important that the historian present names, dates, places and events with citation of sources and documentation of any supposition." Shari Handley says that she sees the need for a history of the project, but it doesn't need "to include every sordid detail on all the infighting and on every political battle that has taken place in our stormy past (and present)". She points out that if the history will be primarily for visitors to USGW, "we'd want to put our best foot forward, would we not?...a basic history, touching on the highlights and accomplishments of the USGW, and the people who have made it great, would be the face we want to show the world, right?" [Let the whitewash begin.] Shari recommends that the successful candidate for historian "should be optimally be someone who has been there from the beginning (or nearly so), and who has no political axe to grind." While she feels that a truly neutral historian is probably impossible to expect, "However, tact and the ability to present an even-handed portrayal of the history of the USGW would be essential." Monday 24 January 2000: Maggie Stewart-Zimmerman says that she once did a timeline with only facts included. She says it took her hours and it includes a lot of information but she chose just to do a timeline "as that cannot be contested. Facts and dates are just that - totally impartial." [Not true, Maggie May. What facts and dates one chooses to include is often highly subjective.] Joe Zsedney says that his only experience with historians is with military historians and he describes how historians exist at several levels within the USAF who pass historical information up the chain. He thinks it would be ideal if someone existed in each state to pass info up to the Board's historian. He also notes "Who started the Project, when, where, why, Who comes, who goes, significant events and dates of events are historical. The internal squabbling is not." [Whitewash.] Joe recommends that if the motion passes, that the Board search "carefully from among the wealth of talent in the Project for someone with experience as historian either in business or government. If we select well the job of the AB in ensuring unbiased and accurate recording of our history will be minimal." [Yes, hire someone who agrees with you from the start and the requirement to censor what they write will indeed be minimal.] Joy Fisher asks if there is any wording in the motion regarding the term length of the position and suggests that if not, the motion be amended to include the provision that appointments be made based on teh election year, with the first appointee serving until Aug 31 2000. She also proposes "that an Historian can be removed by a simple majority of the Board." [thus making the position just one more Board-run popularity contest. Come on, guys, be brave.] Your History Is My Fiction Corner: A couple of Board members have expressed to me privately their concerns over the issue of a Court Historian. They correctly point out that history is written by the winners, so to speak, and that it will probably be an exercise in futility to come up with an "official project history" that not only satisfies a large number of project members but also adequately covers the rich history of the project without embarassing it. Facts and dates are not totally impartial and can be manipulated in such a way as to highlight some events at the expense of others, or to "disappear" other events entirely. For instance, Board members are already discussing the idea that some business in which the Board has engaged does not constitute "history". Can anyone guess which of its activities the Board would prefer not to find in an official history? And although some members of the Board claim that the Board has no right to tell any project member where they can keep their stuff; do you suppose any "official history" will contain information on the time the Board did just that and removed an entire Special Project because of the server it was on? Do you suppose the "official history" will give any information on why one Board member a month resigned during the last term, or why we've had seven NCs in three years? Or why we don't mention Jeff Murphy on any official webpages [and don't forget, this discussion started because he requested that oversight be rectified]? Or what happened to Bill Couch or Jeff Weaver and why we don't do lookups anymore? Or any insight into "the Project has two Census Projects" issue? Will it contain stuff from the secret list or the IRC chats? [History, as someone once said, is made at night.] The Board members' painfully obvious stressing of finding someone "unbiased" for the job is just downright hilarious. Anyone who has been in this project for three years and who has no opinions on the convuluted machinations of its history probably isn't going to be too interested in getting involved in such a highly charged topic now. And having been here since the beginning is no indicator that one knows the history of the project [witness one longtime project member's ignorance of the Black Helicopter Society]. All efforts to find someone out there who knows the history, wants to do the job, and is ideologically pure are essentially meaningless, since anything he or she writes will have to be passed through the Board for approval. Frankly, the assertions made by some Board members that people on this Board could not possibly be "opinionated" are ludicrous. On their secret list, people that raise uncomfortable issues with them get called "destroyers", and accused of spreading "garbage" on mailing lists, and of using the Board to stir up trouble. That some of them apparently think that this qualifies as "unbiased" or "unopinionated" does not impart confidence in their ability to select a truly neutral historian. Even if they do by some miracle find a neutral, knowledgeable, and capable project member willing to serve as an historian, how long do you think that person will survive the popularity contest the Board is apparently going to make of the position? Any historian this Board picks had damn well better put up the history this Board wants to see or their tenure will be very short indeed. Sucker Punch Corner: We hear through the voices in our heads that some Board members are characterizing the ongoing discussion of the Archives' "friendly arrangement" with RW as a "flame war". They seem to be under the impression that some participants in the discussion are trying to lure the Board into openly supporting Root$web, to fan the flames of the argument. We hear that Board members are being urged to stop responding to the discussion and more or less ignore the constituents. [Question for the Board: What exactly is a "beloneous argument"?] "All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach." ---Adolf Hitler This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ----------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Tue Jan 25 12:14:58 2000 Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 12:14:57 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Fooling some of the people ALL of the time...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Tuesday 25 January 2000: There is no Board-L traffic on this date, thus far. Rules Are Made To Be Broken Corner: Archives representative Joe Zsedeny has apparently revised the Archives guidelines. In a message to a CC, he states "Every file manager in the Archives could, if they wished, take the files they manage and put them on any server, anywhere, unilaterally." This may come as a surprise to former KS Archives file manager Ken Thomas who was fired in August 1998 "because he violated the Archives guidelines, specifically not uploading files to the Archives, but receiving them and uploading them elsewhere, in particular, Blue Skyway. [sic]" [Linda Lewis, 1 Nov 1998]. According to voluminous correspondence with Linda at the time, files that are not on RW are not in the Archives. Linda's agreement with Brian precludes any sort of mirror of the Archives on another server, so Joe's apparent free-form interpretation of the guidelines could be construed as a violation of that contract. Joe also seems a little free with contributor's files; since they were presumably donated to the "USGW Archives Project" and that Project can exist only on RW "and no other server", taking them and putting them "on any server, anywhere, unilaterally" could constitute inappropriate taking of those files. This, incidentally, is not the first time an Archives member has revised the guidelines on the fly. Last year, during a discussion of the difficulty in removing submitted files from the Archives, Joy Fisher [who is the Asst. Coordinator of the Archives] stated "Aw c'mon now...we have removed data at the request of submitters. I have removed files, Linda Lewis has removed files, maybe even you have removed files. I don't know why we even have it in the guidelines" [30 Sep 1998]. What we are all curious to know is why, if archivists can apparently remove files from the archives with ease despite the guidelines that say submission is forever, they don't just say "OK" when someone asks them to remove a file? Why make it so difficult and why act like submitters have no right to request such a thing? Mirror, Mirror Corner: Ron Eason, Coordinator of Census II, reports on CC-L today that there is a complete mirror of Census II at this address on Root$web: Census II neither requested this mirror nor knew of its existence until yesterday. The directory apparently was created on Dec 27, 1999, which was right around the time the merger talks between the two census projects were collapsing. Now why do you suppose RW felt the need to mirror Census II's entire directory structure [and all the files in it] in some buried directory called "hold"? Free Speech Corner: We hear some of the Board members are blowing gaskets over CCs who accidentally forward messages to BOARD-L. Ye gods, a lowly CC actually sending a message to BOARD-L! What will they think of next? "To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs." ---Aldous Huxley This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Wed Jan 26 18:22:06 2000 Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 18:22:04 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show cc: jzsed@slic.com Subject: News Flash! Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: DBS News Flash: Jackbooted Thugs Corner: Board member Joe Zsedeny [who represents the Archives] has recently posted a message to BOARD-L in which he vaguely threatens civil and criminal action against his fellow project volunteers. Joe, as we recall, was recently embarrassed by inaccurate comments he made about Archives policy, and rather than clarify his statements, he instead posted a message about copyright to Board-L. For your pleasure, a redacted copy of that message follows: ============ Joe tells us he's been researching copyright law and how it pertains to email. He's shared his findings with his colleagues on their secret list [BOARD-EXEC] but will also share with his fellow volunteers "in order that they not unwittingly violate the copyright laws." He cites a resource that indicates that email is protected under copyright law [interestingly enough, this site belongs to someone who does not appear to be a copyright lawyer, or in fact a lawyer of any type.] Joe then references a site showing where criminal sanctions were obtained against a BBS operator who distributed pirated software [what this has to do with email is not clear; Joe seems to think that since they may be covered by the same law, they are equivalent. Then he cites another url showing civil action against ISPs who fail to stop software pirates who post warez to their servers [again, why? He fails to mention that in Nov 1995 a federal judge in CA ruled that Netcom could not be help responsible for copyright violations made by its users, unless it knew they where copyright violations and did nothing to stop them.] [This case never actually went to trial, so no legal finding of fact was made, and it was not in fact determined that ISPs are "publishers" responsible for the contents of their servers. If they are, RW is in big trouble.] Joe sums up thusly: "Those who forward, receive, republish and carry such on their server are all punishable under the copyright statute, either criminal or civil...technically every message forwarded requires the approval of the sender or list owner. Pirated messages from closed lists or parts thereof, attached and posted elsewhere without permission are actionable under criminal and/or civil statute." Joe says that Board cannot be effective if people are constantly making fun of it and they have taken every opportunity to make their meetings open to the public. They try to answer every email that has merit and Joe himself has never failed to answer a message sent in "an honest attempt to get an answer, whether from a constituent or not." But, he says, he "will not respond in the future to messages whose only clear intent is to ridicule and down grade this potentially wonderful Project for mean and small reasons." He states that he and his fellow Board members will do all in their power to "insure that the pirating of email on and from the Board lists stops. If that means pursuing legal action, so be it." He suggests that if someone wishes to reprint materials from the Board list [he does not specify which one], they should ask the National Coordinator for permission. ========== There you have it, a Daily Board Show News Flash! -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net From merope@Radix.Net Wed Jan 26 18:43:29 2000 Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 18:43:25 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Double your pleasure, double your fun...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Tuesday 25 January 2000: Pam Reid says she would be happy to post a history of the USGW Project on the national page, but she doesn't have a good one. She asks if anyone has a good history of the Project available. Pam thinks that writing up a history of the project is a good idea. Such a history should include a timeline of the beginning of the project, including organizaers, and it should be job of the historian to keep it up to date. She says, "There are things that should be omitted. The infighting, etc. has no place in the history. That is one reason I removed the page about the Jerry Dill thing from the main pages." [Yet, strangely enough, its still there: Ginger Cisewski asks when the Board voted to start several "new" Special Projects that appear on this page: ; she notes that this page was updated Jan 12 and now contain listings for a "Digital Map" and a "Pensions" project. She notes that the procedures for forming new subprojects in the bylaws were not followed and cites the relevant section. She "respectfully" requests "the above named "Special Projects" be removed from that national listing." [These two projects have been listed on that page for months. Both were formed as subprojects of the Archives, so the bylaws allegedly do not apply. Technically, of course, they should be listed as subprojects of the Archives, but they aren't.] Pam says she made the Special Project page on her own without discussing it with anyone, and she "just thought it would be nice if researchers had links to any project that might help them." She "didn't think about rules or Bylaws or anything else except ease of research." [This page is badly out of date: it still lists Pam as the coordinator of the Tombstone Project and Fred Smoot as coordinator of the Map library, and leave out entirely the "Special Collections Project".] Ginger Hayes says it was her understanding that those were subprojects of the Archives. Joe Zsedeny tells Ginger she is correct in her understanding, and says that Pam made "an honest error." Mirror Mirror Corner, part 2: Board member Barbara "Vote Early, Vote Often" Dore tells Ron Eason that she first noticed the duplicated Census II directories shortly before the merger talks collapsed. Maggie Stewart Zimmerman and Linda Lewis both told her that the directories were made to facilitate the merging of the two projects, and the decision to make the mirror was theirs and not Root$web's. This is all well and good, but Babs then redirects the issue away from the clandestine duplication of Census II to the trumped-up issue of whether or not Census II is being diligent about forwarding transcriptions to Census I. She cites absolutely no evidence that they aren't, but goes on about it at some length. [But it doesn't appear to us in the newscube that Census II would have to be diligent about forwarding transcriptions to Census I; from the appearance of that duplicated directory, Census I just takes whatever it wants.] New And Improved Corner: Speaking of the Archives, they have a new subproject, called the "Special Collections Project". It appears to be run by Linda Lewis, and covers those submissions that span several states or that consist of books scanned in their entirety. Check it out at: . Corrections Corner: Joy Fisher has contacted me and informed me that Joe Zsedeny misspoke himself yesterday when he stated that "Every file manager in the Archives could, if they wished, take the files they manage and put them on any server, anywhere, unilaterally." What he meant to say, according to Joy, is that "he could upload copies of HIS files to another server (which is totally within his rights, since he owns the copyrights to HIS files)." Joy also notes that the "The Archives will not authorize mirror sites of selected portions of the Archives." The DBS apologizes for any confusion caused by the contradictory statements made by these members of the Archives and which were previously published here. Who's The Fairest Of Them All Corner: As reported on the CC-L list yesterday, USGenNet has offered to provide a complete mirror of both the Archives project and the Census Project [Census II, we presume] for free. It will be interesting to see how the Board responds to this generous offer. "It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell." ---William Storey, [statement of the aims of the Chicago Times, 1861] This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ----------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Thu Jan 27 13:19:46 2000 Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 13:19:44 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: There is nothing new under the sun...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Wednesday 26 January 2000 Joe Zsedeny posts his message regarding copyright to the Board [this has already been discussed here.] Thursday 27 January 2000: Tim Stowell posts a threat to unsubscribe non-Board members who send mail to Board-L. He says that members who wish to respond to the Board should obtain their individual addresses from the web pages and that messages sent to the list bounce back to him. He then says "If someone who is unauthorized to post to this list continues to do so, they will be unsubbed from this list." He notes that this has not been a widespread problem so far, but "This is a public notice, of consequences for those who fail to heed this request." Tim calls for a vote on Motion 00-1, to appoint an historian. Thus far, five Board members have voted "yes", two have voted "no", and one has abstained. You Read It Here First Corner: Last night's New Zoo Review contained the official announcement of the launch of the new Archives subproject, the Special Collections Project. Movin' On Up Corner: Just a couple of weeks after it got a new SC, it looks like the UTGenWeb is moving to RW: "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." ---Napoleon Bonaparte This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist meorpe@radix.net ----------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Fri Jan 28 08:00:46 2000 Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 08:00:45 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Hit the road, Jack!...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Thursday 27 January 2000: Voting on Motion 00-1 proceeds. Currently the count stands at 7 yes votes, 3 no votes, and 2 abstentions, with 4 Board members yet to vote. Only one Board member, Ginger Cisewski, has appended any sort of comment to their vote. She says that she agrees with Jim Powell's earlier comments that "It's extremely difficult to create a written history without injecting bias of some sort into the facts....Our time and energy would be far better spent elsewhere so therefore I vote NO." Greased Lightening Corner: Last evening, USGenNet president Fred Smoot sent an announcement out that reads in part: "The United States Genealogy Network, Inc. (USGenNet), a nonprofit historical and genealogical web-hosting service, is pleased to announce that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, in record-breaking time, today granted final and permanent approval of our December 2, 1999 application for 501(c)(3) tax-deductible, charitable status." [Let's see, that's a little over a month and a half for the IRS to approve tax-deductible, charitable status for USGenNet. Root$Web submitted their application, when? June? Six months ago? I wonder what the hold up is.] USGenNet provides free server space for USGW counties and for the ALHN, as well as several other online genealogical groups and societies. "Donations" to them are really and truly "donations", not fees for services, and are tax deductible. Please visit their home page at: http://www.usgennet.org/ "It has been my experience that what most viewers and readers are most unhappy about is not that journalists slant the news, but that we don't slant it their way." ---Don Hewitt [executive producer of "60 Minutes"] This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ----------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Sat Jan 29 10:30:03 2000 Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 10:30:00 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO X-Status: Who you gonna call?...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! [today is long, but read all the way to the end. The quote today is _really_ good.] Friday 28 January 2000: Voting on Motion 00-1 continues, with one Board member voting yes, and two voting no. Regarding her vote, Teri Pettit notes that she sees merit in Maggie's idea of the historian as a "timeline maintainer". She says "It would be extremely valuable if there was someone responsible for maintaining a table of the dates that each state first came online, who held offices over what periods, etc. The longer we go without recording such info systematically, the harder it is to recover it." She notes, however, that "many of the comments made by other board members (the historian should be tactful, unbiased, etc.) seem to envision a more narrative history, which I think is a bad idea for the reasons that Virginia expressed." She says that because "it is unclear which of the two kinds of historian a yes vote would be voting for", she would vote "no". Regarding the Special Projects [and in reference to the webpage she creates that lists them], Pam Reid says "As far as the Bylaws go, only Tombstones and Census exist as separate special projects." She, however, felt it would benefit the researcher if all the "special" projects were listed in one place. She notes that she feels strongly that "ALL records belong in ONE central repository, that repository being The USGenWeb Archives." She thinks that is where opinions start to differ. Saturday 29 January 2000: Voting on Motion 00-1 is completed and Tim Stowell announces the results: 8 yes votes, 5 no votes, 2 abstentions, 1 member did not vote. The motion is declared failed because it did not meet the 2/3 rule. Tim also notes that he received two votes from non-Board members, one of whom voted "yes" and one of whom abstained. Ginger Hayes agrees with Pam and sees nothing wrong with listing the projects on the Special Projects page. She suggests that since some object to them being shown as separate projects, Pam could put them under the Archives heading and perhaps use a smaller font size. Ginger thinks that would be "sufficient to identify them as subprojects of the Archives, appease those who object and still let the researchers know that they are there." Molasses In January Corner: Being curious about this whole 501(c)3 process, I called the IRS yesterday and talked to a very nice and helpful public servant. She says that the process to receive tax exemption takes a maximum of 120 days, unless there is something wrong with the application [which could mean missing documents, improperly completed forms, etc]. In that case, the length of time the application takes to be processed depends at least in part on the applicant, since they are usually required to send more documents, respond to IRS questions, etc. I asked her if 6 months was a long time for an application and she told me that generally they don't take that long, but sometimes take much longer if the application is complicated or documents are not received in a timely fashion. She did not find either RootsWeb.com, Inc. or GenSoc.org, Inc. in her database of approved tax-exempt organizations. All this means is that the application has not yet been approved. The IRS is not allowed to give out any information at all on pending or denied applications. The history of Root$Web/GenSoc's application is lengthy. As we all know by now, RW was originally registered as a for-profit company so that Brian Leverich could save a little time and a few bucks. The option of incorporation as a non-profit without getting the tax-exempt status seems not to have occurred to him. For a long time, Brian told RW users and customers why getting the tax-exempt status wasn't necessarily a good thing. For example, in July 1998 they told their customers this: "RootsWeb has substantial expenses: our servers and bandwidth cost a fair amount of money. Incorporating a 501(c)(3) to handle that sort of thing is fairly expensive, takes about six months to do, and most importantly requires a substantial amount of paperwork on a continuing basis... " (22 Jul 1998, Brian Leverich, ROOTSWEB REVIEW: Genealogical Data Cooperative Weekly News, Vol. 1, No. 6) By December of that year, RW had apparently decided that tax-exempt status was not a bad thing after all, and Brian posted this: "RootsWeb has retained Borton, Petrini, and Conron, an old and distinguished California law firm, to prepare a 501(c)(3) incorporation for us. The 501(c)(3) filing is actually kinda messy for a number of reasons, and that's why we're using a firm with strong corporate and tax law departments to do the filing." (Brian Leverich, Team-Rootsweb List, 19 Dec 1998) On May 23, 1999, just five days before they incorporated RootsWeb.com, Inc. as a for-profit corporation in California and Delaware, Brian answered a question by a member of the Team-Rootsweb list by giving him a number of reasons why the 501(c)3 application for Rootsweb was taking so long, noting in particular that "the IRS is currently being a real pill about Internet-based 501(c)(3)s." He also noted that: "...we started the 501(c)(3) process some time ago with counsel in Bakersfield. As we learned more about what was involved, we transferred the work to a firm in Los Angeles with specialized experience in 501(c)(3) incorporations. I think we'll have a bullet-proof filing (so much as any filing is bullet-proof) going to the IRS in the near future." On May 28, 1999 Rootsweb.com, Inc was incorporated in California as a for-profit company. Two months later, in the July 21 edition of the Rootsweb Review, RW CEO Robert Tillman made the following announcement: "On May 28, 1999, we incorporated RootsWeb as a "C" corporation with the name of RootsWeb.com, Inc. In mid-June 1999, we incorporated a new non-profit corporation called GenSoc.org, Inc. We are currently in the process of finalizing an application to the Internal Revenue Service for 5013 (tax-deductible charity) status for GenSoc.org. This application for tax-deductible charity status is an entirely separate and far more difficult process than forming the nonprofit corporation....The Internal Revenue Service typically requires six months to approve or disapprove such a filing. (21 Jul 1999, Robert Tillman, ROOTSWEB REVIEW: RootsWeb's Genealogy News, Vol. 2, No. 29)" At the time he wrote this, the 501(c)3 application had not been filed, and Bob noted that the application may take as long as six months and they could not solicit contributions until it was approved by the IRS. [This is not technically correct. As a non-profit they can solicit contributions, but they cannot claim they are tax deductible.] That is the last time that GenSoc.org has been mentioned in the RWR. In mid-November 1999, someone on asked Brian how "Rootsweb's" application with the IRS was coming along, and he replied: "The application for the nonprofit operations has been with the IRS now for something like three and a half months. We've had no communications from the IRS, other than a confirmation that they received the application." [Brian Leverich, 10 Nov 1999, Rootsweb-Help-L; note that he does not mention that the application is not for RW] Based on this, the application was probably submitted at the end of July. Here we are at the end of January, six months later and no further word on the application. The IRS may or may not be "a real pill about Internet-based 501(c)(3)s", but its obvious that at least one internet-based non-profit managed to get its approval in 49 days [substantially less than both the 120 days the IRS lady says it takes and the 6 months RW says it takes]. Perhaps someone out there can prevail on RW to update us all on the status of the application. Today's quote is from a reader, and is provocative, to say the least: "Linda also says that the archives have a contract with RootsWeb, and has repeatedly given me to understand that in the unlikely event that the board would direct that the archives be removed from RootsWeb, her response would be to remove the archives from the Project and keep them at RW." ---Megan Zurawicz, to the Board, 16 Feb 1999 This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------------ Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Mon Jan 31 20:41:35 2000 Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 20:41:33 -0500 (EST) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO X-Status: Shoveling snow...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Sunday 30 January 2000: There was no Board-L traffic on this date. Monday 31 January 2000: There is no Board-L traffic on this date, thus far. Behind the Scenes Corner: Although it doesn't look it, the Board has not been entirely inactive over the last couple of days. We've heard that the Archives has rejected the offer made by USGenNet to host a free mirror of the entire Archives. Joy Fisher, second in command over at the Archives, gave the following reasons for turning down the offer: 1) perceived instability at "USGenNet/USIGS/ALHN" [although the three are independent of each other], and 2) the Archives has previously had poor experience with mirrors. USGenNet has, we are told, explained the relationship between itself and the other organizations, and also explained that mirroring can [and should] be automated, so that the Archives and its mirror are always entirely identical. A couple of Board members have responded to a CC's request that they address the issue of servers who claim to be "sponsors" of the USGW Project. Barbara "non sequiter" Dore's response boils down to "amend the bylaws if you don't like it". Joy Fisher, on the other hand, helpfully responded by pointing out that 1) "USGenWeb has NO agreements regarding sponsorship of the USGenWeb Project", and 2) "Every server that provides service for USGenWeb has the right to claim sponsorship and I will defend their right to do so." [Joy also noted that no server may claim ownernship of the project.] Fun On a Snow Day Corner: A reader sent me this URL: http://www.ss.ca.gov/business/corp/corporate.htm If you go here, click on the "Records Search" link on the left. In the search box for Corporate Record Search, enter "RootsWeb.com, Inc." [no quotes" and hit "Submit". See what you get. If interested, you can go back to the search box, and also input "GenSoc.org, Inc." [no quotes] and see what you get for that one as well. If anyone's interested you can use the handy online form to send for the incorporation records for both of these corporations. "CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit." ---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net -------------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2000 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved.