Monday, January 31, 2005 Read It And Weep A DAILY BOARD SHOW NEWS FLASH!! THIS JUST IN: A litte bird has told us that earlier today Richard Pettys retained an attorney and that attorney has sent a "cease and desist" letter to Shari Handley, National Coordinator of the USGenWeb Project. The letter reportedly notifies Shari that unless the trial is stopped immediately and all his counties are returned, Richard will file suit against her and all past and present Board members who have participated in recent actions against. One way or another, we do believe the Trial of Richard Pettys is over. Stay tuned for more details... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show posted by merope at 2:30 PM 0 comments A Big Sucking Sound Once over lightly...its Your Daily Board Show! GETTING BUSY: Discussion of Motion 05-01 has blossomed on the Board's public list and has centered on the need for more than one Special Projects representative. Pertinent excerpts from the discussion are below: "This motion does not address how the transition would happen. Why would you hold a special election and not allow the existing reps to finish out the term they were elected for?" -Cyndie Enfinger "One objective set is...A rep ascertains the majority opinion of members of the SPs and supports that majority opinion by casting a supportive vote on the AB...the rep needs no special insight into the way the SPs function...A rep not a member of an SP is less likely to be charged with favoritism...Therefore an independent rep makes solid sense...IMHO the membership of the SPs should elect anyone they want to represent them who has no confliction of interest...there should be at least two reps for any section of the membership." --Don Kelly "...[I] would potentially be willing to support this motion if two things changed; one that the number of SP reps is two and secondly, that the transition of this change is spelled out...The Archives term ends this year and could be filled at the next election as a SP rep. The current TS rep should be allowed to finish their term and at next year's election be filled as the second SP rep...Two reps would also potentially allow for each one to come from a different project and give volunteers a choice of who they can go to." --Cyndi "Cyndie's comments make sense to me. I don't know if the AB's authority extends to amending the amendment, though." --Angie Rayfield "I think that there are a good many people, just like myself, who represent numerous areas...The basic idea of being a Rep is to understand all areas of the Project and represent in what is a fair and equitable manner...the change is an issue of more fairly representing the members of the Project in whatever venue they happen to be in. As a member of some of the Special Projects, I personally would not be in favor if I thought it would reduce the input." --Jan Cortez "The SP leadership/membership was not included in the development of this amendment/motion, yet the change in their representation on the AB is the focus of it...It is not correct to assume that because some members of SP have involvement in the general project, that they speak on behalf of the rest of SP...There are some issues that SP may have a different point of view on. It seems fair and equitable to ask that Special Projects have two voices as they do now for reasons that have already be covered." --Cyndi "Since the Archives is the largest SP why not have 2 reps, 1 from Archives and 1 to represent the all the others?...I'm just concerned that with the larger number of Archives volunteers that all the other SPs will feel left out or not represented if there is only 1 AB rep, since it's more than likely that an Archives member will be the elected rep...Like some others have mentioned with only 1 rep from all the SPs if that person isn't available then there's no one representing the SPs." --Kathi Jones-Hudson "The Special Projects total 314. Considering three AB members are selected from the membership of each region (two CC reps and on SC rep) by the membership of that region, modifying this motion to allow for two AB members from the SP membership to be selected by the SP membership is within reason. The current by-laws list three reps from SP, so this would be technically reducing the total representation by SP by one seat." --Cyndi [analysis based on data provided by the Election Committee] "Two makes it harder to be prejudiced on any point...harder to promote a personal agenda." --Don "The motion is whether or not to make the amendment urgent. The AB can NOT modify the wording of the amendment...Read the bylaws...using the numbers below, you will find that one CC rep represents an average of 287.75 CCs. That is still fairly equivalent of 1 SP rep for 314 members. It has already been stated that there are too many SC reps on the AB, but that can be handled in a future amendment." --Betsy Mills [quoting the wrong section of the bylaws] "The reasons I suggest at least two reps for any sub project are numerous, less chance for collusion to obtain a favorable outcome being just one reason...two reps could conspire to a single viewpoint...I have no problem supporting two reps...What I believe you are suggesting is an amendment to an existing bylaw, which the BRC could in context and on agenda broach...What I suggest I believe is doable, by refining your proposal and submitting it to one of your reps to pass on to Roger Swafford, or another member of the BRC with a copy to the NC...Remember that the AB and the BRC are aware of how I feel about this, and I do want to avoid conflictions of interest. I vote what the SCs (NW/P) want and that is my primary job. I have on occasion, with more information, voted against my own proposal, and that too is my job...Good luck with this......I will be looking for it." --Don "May I motion to table this motion to give time to approach the states that submitted this and request them to modify the wording?...every time I point out a valid reason why two reps for SP would be fair, it is knocked down as though valid reasons don't matter." --Cyndi "I ask that this motion be pulled to address the concerns of the proposed amendment wording. If the submitter will not pull the motion, I urge the AB to vote NO, so that a fair and equitable amendment can be introduced as urgent as permitted in the by-laws..." --Cyndi "...this amendment must be placed on the national website and published to the appropriate lists as required by the bylaws and I respectfully ask the National Coordinator to please do this immediately. This amendment worded as it is now will be on the ballot at the next general election as it is already supported by more than five states...There has been a question about the implementation of the amendment. That was covered in the introductory paragraph...It would be up to the Advisory Board to accept this implementation or to make up their own." --Betsy Somewhere in the discussion Betsy also submitted a correction for the faulty wording in her original proposal and Shari accepted it. So, there's been a bit of lively discussion, which is always heartening to see. What is also heartening is that I wrote to each Board member about this this morning, and only two of them bounced my mail. [One of them is Betsy, of course. We find this an exceedingly mature and responsible way to handle a constituent, but at least she didn't call me a jerk.] One of the Board members has asked Roger for his opinion on whether the "urgency" provision will allow the Board to alter the proposals. We are curious to see how he will reply, since no matter what he says it will upset someone. This is really very simple. The bylaws give us two ways to amend. One requires a certain set of steps, and the other requires a different set of steps. We can quibble about whether the bylaws require 5 state sponsors or 6, or whether a "request" to the NC to post and announce proposed amendments can be denied, but at the heart of it, the bylaws clearly delineate how non-urgent and urgent amendments are to be handled. Betsy has tried to amalgamate them but the bylaws really do not make provision for this. She has now staked out her turf that the proposed amendments will not be altered by the Board and if the Board attempts to alter them she will take them to the regular election [so we may have three versions of these amendments to vote on come summer.] What can the Board do? It has several options: 1) Decide the proposals are not urgent and let them take their chances during the regular election. It is not clear that this will cause all that many problems. Should the amendments pass, an orderly transition can be worked out. Or the old seats can be declared immediately null and a special election can be held to fill the one new seat. 2) Decide the proposals are urgent and that this gives the Board, as the correct sponsor of "urgent" amendments, the right to alter the proposed amendments to address the concerns of the Special Projects representatives or of any other Board members. [Only a handful have participated in the public discussion.] From Betsy's statements, this appears to mean that her versions will still go the project for a vote in the summer, although if the Board's version passes in a special election, hers will no longer refer to existing seats or existing text. 3) Amend Motion 05-01 specifically to allow the Board to alter the proposed amendments prior to declaring them urgent and sending them to the EC for a special election. [The motion now only addresses the urgency of the amendments.] This will also most likely result in Betsy taking her amendments to the regular election, with the same caveat as above. You can consider that the most expedient way to address this would be to essentially preserve the status quo by retaining two SP representatives and amending the bylaws to eliminate mention of the Census Project. As suggested by both Cyndi and Kathi, one rep can serve the 900 pound gorilla that is the Archives and the other can serve the remainder of the Special Projects, both existing and future. The Board will be relieved of the burden of resolving the Census Project issue, no current SP members will lose representation, and those smaller SPs that currently have no representation will gain a vote and the ability to forward candidates for office. They may also luck out and avoid the perception that the Board is taking away something from the other SPs. Hey, it could work... BONUS QUOTE: "The way we have been thinking for the last few years isn't working very well. We need to start thinking outside the box, find solutions we never thought about before. Think about it." -Don Kelly, BOARD-L, 30 Jan 2005 -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Chock full o' good ideas since 1998 posted by merope at 9:40 AM 0 comments Sunday, January 30, 2005 A Start Is A Step In The Right Direction Going to the dogs...its Your Daily Board Show! POCKETS OF RESISTANCE: Discussion of Motion 05-01 continued on the Board's public list, and it appears that both of the current Special Projects Reps are a bit concerned about the proposed amendments. Earlier, Cyndi wondered if these amendments were in fact a way to limit SP representation on the Board and now Kathi Jones-Hudson wonders the same thing: "...it will be unlikely that 1 AB rep for the SPs will be from any other project other than the Archives...why should anyone assume that a Rep from other project would adequately represent a project they aren't familiar with?...What guarantee do the other SPs have that they will have some input before a decision is made?" She also asked, "What's the reason for this change in the By-Laws? Is it a numbers thing or is to reduce the input of SPs on the Board?" On another topic, Gail Meyer Kilgore asked "...what is wrong with holding special elections? You say it puts a burden on the EC, is that not what they were formed to do...If they have all their information on members, then other than having the election set up, issuing passwords and tallying the votes, it might give them something else to do to help this project along." [Wow. How's that for baldly stating that the EC has nothing better to do than run special elections for the Board and apparently isn't doing enough already to help the Project?] TALES FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY: On the BRC's public comment list, discussion has focused on the Board's failure to follow the bylaws in the filing of the proposed amendments, which is somewhat ironic given that the amendments were filed at least in part because the Board is in violation of the bylaws. However, a careful reading of the "urgency" clause of the bylaws indicates that the Advisory Board itself must propose urgent amendments, and not any state organization or individual Board member. Thus if the Board wishes to declare these amendments urgent, the Board itself must propose them and presumably they must pass a 2/3 vote of Board members. One could argue that this would then give the Board the right to alter the proposed amendments to address the concerns stated by some of its members. [We doubt this will happen since Betsy will probably withdraw the amendments before she allows them to be changed.] In any case, if the Board declares this matter "urgent", it is violating the bylaws in doing so; and if it does not, then the bylaws require an entire sequence of events to happen in order for the proposal to be submitted, announced, posted, co-sponsored, and placed on the regular election ballot. We wonder if at least part of the impetus for a finding of "urgency" is that it will sidestep the 30 day posting requirement. 30 days is a lot of time for this project to discuss something and in general the longer people to have to discuss something, the more things they find wrong with it. [See below.] Over on DISCUSS, the conversation has been more far-ranging. One person suggested just eliminating all the Special Projects from the Board, and another suggested that this would "sure lead to massive collaspe of the whole Project." [No explanation of why was forthcoming.] The bulk of the discussion, however, has centered on eliminating regional representation entirely. Truly, in a project such as this one that exists more or less entirely online, abitrarily drawn geographic regions have little meaning. Indeed, the "class" distinctions among project members have far more weight. I cannot think that as a CC in the SW/SC region I have any different interests from a CC in the NW/P region. I do however have different interests from an SC in any region or from any of the Special Projects. I have never seen business before the Board that would in any way affect one region differently than another, but there have been many motions that affect one class of volunteers differently than another class. So class-based representation makes more sense than regional based representation. The only argument I have seen for regional representation is that it allows members to know who "their" representative is and to whom they should send correspondence. [Of course, this is less effective when your representative can "divorce" you, or refuse to represent you.] But as our hapless National Coordinator has pointed out, there are other ways to "assign" representatives to volunteers if the regional system is eliminated. The whole discussion is moot, of course, since no currently proposed bylaws amendments come even close to this sort of radical departure from our current organization. TITLE QUOTE: Today's title comes from our favorite Board wordsmith, Don Kelly. He was responding to Cyndi's question as to what he meant by a "start" toward a policy statement regarding data storage. Of course, a "start" can also be a step in the wrong direction, a step backwards, or a false step. Watch that last step; its a doozy. [We swear, our next project for the History Page will have to be a Collected Wit & Wisdom of Don Kelly; these pearls must be saved for Posterity! All contributions are welcome.] -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Stepping out since 1998 posted by merope at 8:25 AM 0 comments Saturday, January 29, 2005 Pardon Me, Your Agenda Is Showing All over but the shouting..its Your Daily Board Show! WHAT'S UP DOC?: Chatter on the Board's public list yesterday and this morning revolved around Motion 05-01. Cyndi Enfinger, Don "Poet Laureate" Kelly, and Betsy Mills engaged in a mildly interesting discussion. Cyndi asked a few questions about the motion, namely: "Why is this considered urgent?...Why not wait until election time for this?...Does this have anything to do with the agenda item: c. Policy Statement: County sites vs. Archives as repository of collected data..." Don's responses were, um, revealing. He said the matter is "urgent" because the Board is in "violation of the bylaws." Don also said this matter can't wait a few months for the regular election because we "Want to get a rep seated before election cycle...and open voting priviledges to hundreds of volunteers." Last, but certainly not least, Don told Cyndi that the proposed amendments don't have anything to do with any proposed policy statement regarding a repository of data, "but it is a start." [Now, don't you just wonder what that is all about? I'd worry about it a lot more if Don wasn't so prone to epic inarticulateness and off-the-cuff raving.] Let's explore Don's points. The project has been in violation of the bylaws on this matter for years with no apparent ill effects, and its never been an urgent matter to fix it before. And really, its never bothered the Board to violate the bylaws at its whim, so why this should need fixing before the regular election is still a mystery. The amendments will also not seat a rep prior to the next election. If the Board agrees to Betsy's suggestion, the current reps will serve until the end of their regular terms and the new rep would not be seated until September 1, 2005. Currently, Kathi Jones-Hudson's regular term ends August 31, 2006 and Cyndi Enfinger's ends August 31, 2005. Presumably if the amendment passes, a membership-wide vote on the new seat will be on the summer ballot. This will mean that both a "Special Projects" representative and a "Tombstone Project" representative will be on the Board for one year, unless the Board ignores Betsy's suggestion and terminates both the current special projects seats on August 31, 2005. The amendments themselves will not "open voting privileges" to hundreds of volunteers; that will still require specific Board action to recognize one or more Census Projects, which they will have no impetus to do once a Census Project is not required by the bylaws. If this were so urgent, the Board could solve the problem much quicker by just picking an official Census Project. In any case, Cyndi was unmoved by Don's explanation of the need for urgency and noted, "We have been in violation of the bylaws for years," as well as finding it silly to have special elections for something that is not urgent. She also goes back to her original issue of one representative being too few for the number of people involved. She wonders, "is that what this is really about. Push out the special project reps, so special project volunteers have no say in project matters. Special Projects have made a great contribution to the USGenWeb...They have as much right as any one else for fair representation on the Board. It this were really about changing the wording to reflect the lack of a Census Project rep, it would list two reps and not one." Betsy Mills then popped in to try and soothe the troubled waters. She said the matter should be urgent because, "If this amendment is voted on during the next general election, then a special election would be required to fill the seat. If the amendment is voted on before the general election, then the seat can be voted on during the general election...Voting now on the amendment will allow the new representative to take their seat on Sept. 1 at the same time as the other new reps." She also noted that "This is not just about removing the Census Project Rep. It is also about adding the other Special Projects so that they also have a vote and representation...If the number of SPs grows too large for one rep, then an amendment could be introduced to add one." [We have found it very interesting to see how Betsy's explanation of the purpose of the amendments and the necessity of urgency has changed over the last couple of months. She used to passionately claim it would "solve" the Census Project problem, but she's moved away from that non-starter and now claims its a "fair representation" issue. IMO, the best explanation for urgency is so that the seat can be on the regular election if the amendments pass. It could get complicated if the amendments themselves are included on the same ballot as at least one of the seats they will eliminate. But I doubt very strongly that that sort of "urgency" is what the original framers of the bylaws had in mind when they wrote the section on amending the bylaws.] And last, David Morgan wondered if the motion had been posted to the national page and forwarded to the relevant mailing lists. We checked and it hasn't, unless its hidden somewhere. Remember, the Board is only voting on whether or not the motion constitutes an urgent matter, not to alter it in any way or decide whether or not it is a valid amendment. It has its six required sponsors and must be on a ballot eventually. The bylaws require that an "urgent" motion be posted within two business days of receipt and that the project gets a whole three more business days to look at it. Then the EC has to prepare a special ballot and the whole project gets five days to vote on it. There is no time constraint on when the EC must hold the vote though. So our guess is that once the Board declares this motion "urgent", the "two business days" clock starts, and it will be posted to the national website in some difficult to find place. Then it will be announced on a handful of lists and the vote will take place in conjunction with the logo poll, if its at all possible. If the Board decides it is not urgent, it will be on the ballot in the summer along with the BRC's versions. SAY WHAT YOU MEAN, MEAN WHAT YOU SAY: We have noticed, as have others, that there is an interesting discrepancy in the proposed amendments as written by Betsy Mills. The suggested revisions for Article V reads: "Strike "one (1) representative each from The USGenWeb Archives Project, The USGenWeb Census Project, and The USGenWeb Tombstone Project," and replace with "one (1) Special Projects representative elected by members of The USGenWeb Archives Project, The USGenWeb Census Project, and The USGenWeb Tombstone Project"" [note the mention of the Census Project in the replacement text]. But her version of the new amendment in total reads: "The Advisory Board membership shall consist of: the National Coordinator, four (4) State Coordinator Regional Representatives, eight (8) Local Coordinator Regional Representatives, one (1) Special Projects representative elected by members of the special projects, and one (1) at-large representative." [Now the Census Project has disappeared!] We have a hard time believing this could through the approval process in seven states and no one caught that discrepancy. Betsy has corrected this not-so-minor oversight on DISCUSS, but not so far on the Board list. OUR READERS WRITE: A bravely anonymous comment to yesterday's post on mediations and grievances claims that Shari's alleged presence on all mediations is covered in the bylaws, under the part that allows her to be an ex-officio member of all official committees and sub-committees. We have reviewed the well-hidden mediation procedures and not only is the "mediation process" nowhere referred to as a "committee" or "sub-committee", the volunteer mediator team is not structured as a committee [no chair is mentioned], does not work as a committee [individual mediators handle each process], and is never mentioned as a committee in any Board correspondence. Nor does it anywhere state in the mediation procedures that the National Coordinator will be a party to all mediations and will have the authority to determine by fiat the outcome of mediation prior to its start. No change to the bylaws is required, but certainly a change to the mediation procedures is warranted if there will be additional Board members participating in the process and if the National Coordinator will be permitted to personally determine the outcome of the process. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Been there, done that since 1998 posted by merope at 9:49 AM 0 comments Friday, January 28, 2005 Fragrant Paranoia It just goes to show you...its Your Daily Board Show! THE SCURRYING OF MICE: Following a few days of torpor, the Board burst into sudden activity yesterday, with Mistress Shari apparently trying to tie up some loose ends before adjourning the Board's January meeting [and what a wild January it has been...]. First up is the Board's newest Sekrit Cabal, Shari's pet Grievance Committee. Yesterday, she reminded the Board that not enough of them had stepped up to volunteer as committee members and alternates and requested that three more Board members put their names forward. Denise Woodside [who is currently a mediator], Bettie Wood [who recently refused to represent one of her constituents on a grievance], and Don Kelly [who graciously offered to recuse himself if he has "a confliction of interest on any matter before the committee"] immediately volunteered. So it looks like in short order the USGenWeb Project will be the proud parent of yet another secret Board committee with yet another secret list wherein they can trash Project members to their hearts' content. Second on the list was the handful of holdout Assistant State Coordinators that for some reason don't want the National Coordinator knowing where they live [imagine that]. The list is down to three, who Shari publicly named because some personnel issues apparently don't warrant confidentiality. Don Kelly noted that one of them, Barb Lavin, is not an ASC. The last order of business that popped up is Betsy Mills' bold new initiative to "solve" the Census Project conundrum by eliminating all the Special Projects seats on the Board but one. After several days discussion of this motion privately, David Morgan forwarded the proposed bylaws amendments to Board-L on behalf "of a member of SW/SC" [meaning Betsy]. Jan Cortez swiftly moved "that the USGenWeb Advisory Board consider the bylaw amendment sponsored by the ARGenWeb and co-sponsored by MSGenWeb, TXGenWeb, DEGenWeb, MIGenWeb, ORGenWeb and WIGenWeb Projects as *urgent*, so that it would be placed before the membership for a vote, at the earliest possible convenience of the EC." [And look at that list of states, would you...]. David Morgan seconded and Shari opened Motion 05-01 for discussion. Don Kelly was immediately and unconditionally positive, noting: "[It] addresses a long standing problem of not being able to set a rep for the archives/special projects...We have the opportunity to move rapidly on this...I have no suggested changes at this time." Cyndi Enfinger was a little more concerned about the substance of the motion. She first noted that Don clearly has no idea what he's talking about, and went on to say "I don't agree that ONE representative for all Special Projects is a fair ratio of AB rep to volunteers...there are more Special Project volunteers here than you realize. I think there should be two Special Project reps as there are now. I may not object to there being TWO "general" Special Project reps instead of naming the projects they represent, but...I do not think one rep fairly represents the number of volunteers involved..." With due respect to Cyndi, whose objection may be well taken [we have no idea how many voting members are in any of the approved Special Projects currently], both she and Don are missing the point. First, why is this urgent? The Project has had no Census Project and the seat has sat empty for years with no apparent ill effects on the Project. [Well, there is the ridicule and embarrassment, which we understand the Board is quite sensitive about.] Now suddenly its urgent that we eliminate the requirement to have a census project and thus get rid of the empty Board seat? The BRC is currently working on an amendment that will do the exact same thing for the regular election cycle, which is a bare six months away. Why can't this motion wait until then? Betsy's motion is also silent on the issue of quorum. Currently the bylaws require 9 voting members to reach a quorum and there are officially 16 voting members. The motion will drop the official number of members to 14, but not change the number of members required for a quorum. We aren't sure this matters much since Shari just hold votes open until a quorum is reached, but 9 members is slightly more than half of the current number of members; it will be nearly two thirds of the proposed number of members should Betsy's motion pass. This motion is also hardly fair to the EC, which will have to field two national elections within a very short time, although we suppose they can combine the poll for the logos and the vote on the amendments if the Board can get this "urgency" motion passed within a few days. The broader issues that we of course do not expect any Board member to raise are that motion is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to hand the seat to Linda Lewis in perpetuity, and of course will solve nothing in regards to the Census Project. The USGenWeb Project will still have no official Census Project, and if it wishes to allow both Census Projects to vote for the seat it will have to formally approve both of them as official Special Projects. That is unlikely to happen. However, by purging any mention of the Census Project from the bylaws [and possibly even from the project's webpages], the Board can allow itself to declare victory and go home. See? No Census Project, no problem! WHERE ARE THEY NOW? From time to time we have written about an ongoing grievance/mediation process involving a CC whose county was taken from him in the Great Georgia Coup of 2004 and then not returned to him when he reapplied for it. The poor CC has had a rough road of it: his representative Bettie Woods apparently flat out refused to represent him, RAL Betsy Mills told him that as a CC he had no rights and called him a jerk, and he was told he was at the end of a very long line of prior grievances. By some miracle, his grievance entered mediation a few weeks ago. A little bird has told us, and we are sad to report, that his grievance was declared failed a few days ago. This is particularly sad because the grievance failed not because it was without merit but because the mediator didn't like the tone of the CC's emails. Apparently she said something to the effect that she agreed that he should have gotten his county back and was prepared to recommend the same, but because she felt he took a snarky tone with her she was declaring the mediation failed. So you see, the actual substance of your claim is apparently irrelevant if you don't talk sweetly enough to your mediator. [Only Board members get to use words like "jerk" in these issues.] We did learn some interesting things from our little bird though. Shari Handley apparently is subbed to all mediation procedures and at least in this one started off the proceedings by declaring that the Board would absolutely not dictate any restrictions on any SC ever with regards to state level volunteers [yet a bare 8 months ago they removed the leadership of two states over a handful of fired CCs, go figure]. This effectively rendered most of the CC's grievance entirely moot, since he would not be getting back the county that was stolen from him. Shari also apparently summarily dismissed a major part of his grievance involving blacklisting by SCs. Now, we've read over the very difficult to find Mediation Procedures document and nowhere do we see mentioned that the NC is to be party to the proceedings or that she will have personal authority to alter or deny any part of a grievance once it goes to mediation. NCs in general have never been too shy about making up their own rules as they go along, and the last two in particular have felt no qualms about using their authority to mold the Project into an image that pleases them. "Kinder and gentler" it is not, but at least we know that Betsy was right. CCs have no rights. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Missing the boat since 1998 posted by merope at 8:35 AM 2 comments Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Yawn On the road again...its Your Daily Board Show! BROKEN RECORD: Late Sunday evening, Shari Handley announced that Plan B won with a vote of 9 to 3. The wording that was forwarded to the Election Committee to use for the wording in the upcoming Logo Poll is: "(1) Should The USGenWeb Project have only one official logo design, which each member site shall be required to display prominently, or should there also be additional approved logo designs from which members can choose? One Logo Multiple Logos (2) If this poll determines that most respondents want multiple logo choices, then how many alternative logo designs should be available to choose from?(in addition to the one "official" logo): 1, 2, 3, more than 3" So there you have it. IIRC, the time to register so you can vote in this poll rapidly draws to a close, so if this issue is keeping you awake at night, you'd best get yourself over to the EC webpage to register before January 26 and put your name on the list. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Behind the curveball since 1998 posted by merope at 5:45 AM 0 comments Sunday, January 23, 2005 Flurries Walking in a winter wonderland...its Your Daily Board Show! TOUGH CHOICES: After a couple days of blessed silence, the public Board list erupted into activity yesterday. According to NC Shari Handley, the EC made it clear that they needed wording for the poll NOW, and so early yesterday evening she told the Board she would be sending specific wording to the EC "immediately" with the instruction that if no further word was heard from the Board by Monday morning, they should proceed with that wording. This was Shari's proposed wording: "(1) Should The USGenWeb Project have only one official logo design, which each member site shall be required to display prominently, or should there also be additional approved logo designs from which members can choose? One Logo Multiple Logos (2) How many alternative logo designs should be available to choose from (in addition to the one "official" logo): 0, 1, 2, 3, more than 3" She noted if the will of the membership was that we have more than 3 logos, the Board would itself decide how many more than three it would have. A handful of Board members conversed fitfully on how the poll should be worded, and then the EC stepped in. The EC correctly noted that the motion establishing the poll required only that it establish whether the membership was in favor of one logo or multiple logos and suggested this wording for the poll: "Should one or multiple logos be used by the USGenWeb Project?" At this point, Shari asked the Board members to indicate their preferences for either A) the EC's sensible version; or B) the Board's wordy and confusing version. Thus far, the Board's version is leading by 6 votes to 3, and the remaining Board members have until 11pm tonight to respond. In other Board news, there has been no other Board news. There has been no further discussion of the proposed Grievance Committee, although over on the DISCUSS list David Samuelsen has suggested that the Board consider using the WorldGenWeb's Policy and Procedure document as inspiration. We went and checked it out, and although the document is very nice [it baldly states, for instance, that no local coordinator can be removed without due process, something that our Board will not guarantee to our membership], it fails to set forth procedures for when the dispute is between a local coordinator and someone higher up in the heirarchy, or when grievances involve Board members. They do have an interesting method of forming committees to handle grievances however, mainly in that once primary efforts have failed to resolve the issue, the WGW Board appoints a committee that includes one Board member and two non-Board members. David claims this works fabulously. Other discussion on DISCUSS of this topic has centered around Angie Rayfield's whining over imagined slights to her integrity as a Board member, and other members noting that suggesting the process involve non-Board members is not suggesting that all Board members are biased and incapable of being impartial. During the course of the discussion, someone made an interesting observation of the inherent flaws in the current proposed system: If you have a grievance and take it to the Board, the mediation process is handled by a Board member; if that fails it next goes to a Grievance Committee which is composed entirely of Board members; if that fails, the issue next goes to...the entire Board. So, as the member notes, "Why is every complaint ONLY handled by the AB members? Why does the AB have to insist on having COMPLETE control over any complaint? If one is to be judged, or helped, by their peers, why are there ONLY AB members involved? Why does it have to be ALL up to the AB?" We'll note that past discussions of including non-Board members in grievance or mediation activities has centered more on keeping grievance discussions secret than on any concern over how to construct grievance panels that would be perceived as impartial by all parties. The Board does not like it when grievances are played out in public by anyone but themselves and past Boards have simply recognized that every additional person let into the Sekrit Sandbox is a potential leak and they have resisted the idea strenuously on that basis. When she's not complaining about how she's perceived as a Board member, Angie is insisting that people who want non-Board involvement in these things tell her how they'd work the process. Although a number of suggestions have come forth, we'll go out on a limb here and suggest that coming up with a final plan is less important at this point than getting the Board to entertain some new ways of doing things. The proposed system appears designed to actually discourage members from filing grievances and seeing them through rather than ensuring that each member, regardless of who they are and who their complaint is against, receives an impartial hearing and fair resolution. TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS: The other day we received another communication from Richard Pettys asking us to publish another statement regarding his ongoing trial. Apparently he is not allowed access to public discussion lists within the Project for the duration of his suspension [7.5+ months and counting] and so cannot disseminate this update himself. Anyways, here is the latest on the Other Trial of the Century: "I get several emails everyday from inquiring minds wanting to know what is going on with my trial. In an effort to save what fingers I have left after all of this typing, I would like to answer all here. We are negotiating and trying to find some common ground. I believe that we are very close and look forward to resolving this matter in an amicable matter so that we may all go forward in the best interests of the USGWP." Although this is both non-committal and non-informative, it is clear at least that the Board is still negotiating with Richard and mayhaps we can expect an end to the trial sometime before the end of the year. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Covering all the bases since 1998 posted by merope at 8:51 AM 0 comments Thursday, January 20, 2005 News Of The Wacky Better than a sharp stick in the eye...its Your Daily Board Show! SNOOZE AND LOSE: The Board list continued to remain quiet throughout yesterday, with no further public discussion on any of the important topics currently facing it. We have heard however of a new official Board policy that is making the rounds. The little bird that slipped this to me does not know the source but claims it comes from a recent directive from Shari Handley. We publish it here as a service to the Project and to those members who may be considering bringing business before the Board. "The Advisory Board does not have the authority or the desire to force a State Coordinator to give an open county to any individual. Our State Coordinators are tasked with putting together a CC team that will make their state project as strong as possible. Each SC must use his or her own judgement and must be free to accept or reject an applicant based on whatever qualifications they feel are important among their team. The USGenWeb Advisory Board will not dictate to State Coordinators the criteria by which they must choose CCs." [The Board must have come up with this policy after it canned Tim Stowell and Richard Pettys for firing a few CCs.] From what we have seen in our many years in this project, a fairly large number of grievances sent to the Board involve disputes in which the SC has denied someone a county, removed them from a county, or refused to recognize support personnel on a county. This new [?] policy pretty much means that all of these types of grievances, and in fact probably most grievances involving a CC and an SC, are already decided in the SC's favor, without the benefit of mediation or a hearing. IN OTHER NEWS: W. David Samuelsen reports that five states have signed on to support ARGenWeb's proposal to amend the bylaws to eliminate all but one Special Projects representative seat on the Board. Those states are: Texas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Oregon [where W. David is the new ASC], and Michigan. We expect that amendment author and RAL Betsy Mills will be making a formal presentation to the Board in short order, requesting that the Board label this amendment "urgent" and invoke the emergency clause of the Bylaws. As you will no doubt recall, this amendment is the one that will resolve the Census Project problem by eliminating a seat that neither of them has fought over for a few years now. The Bylaws Revisions Committee also has an amendment in the works that would reduce the number of Special Projects seats to one and also restructure the other Board seats dramatically. [W. David claims rather voceriferously that Betsy's amendment trumps the BRC's which, frankly, is better, but he has always pretty much been wrong about things.] In other Bylaws revisions news, we published the following data this morning on the public BRC comment list. It regards the different exposure of various classes of Board members to recall, based on the proposed provision in the revised Article 10 that says 51% of the votes that elected a representative is sufficient to initiate a recall action. Here are the current Board members along with their positions, the number of votes they got in their last election, and the number of signatures required to initiate a recall election: NAME/POSITION/VOTES/# SIGNATURES REQUIRED Mills, Betsy/RAL/0/NA (Appointed) Handley, Shari/NC/245/125 Blum-Barton, Linda/SEMACC/115/59 Woodside, Denise/SEMACC/83/43 Wood, Bettie/SWSCCC/79/41 Brown, Teri/NENCCC/63/33 Cortez, Jan/NENCCC/63/33 Morgan, David/SWSCCC/64/33 Meyer-Kilgore, Gail/NWPLCC/60/31 Bednar, Darilee/NWPLCC/47/24 Enfinger, Cyndi/Archives/35/18 Jones-Hudson, Kathi/Tombstone/13/7 Flesher, Larry/SWSCSC/10/6 Rayfield, Angie/SEMASC/8/5 Kelly, Don/NWPLSC/6/4 Howland, Richard/NENCSC/5/3 As we can see from these data, SC reps will have exceedingly poor job security. For example, I will only need to find two other people who think that Richard Howland has engaged in "gross dereliction of duty, excessive failure to participate in Advisory Board votes, ethics violations, or conduct characterized by a lack of fairness and good faith such as disparaging, bigoted or grossly offensive behavior..." in order to start a recall action against him. Special Projects reps have slightly better job security, but the NC and RAL are truly sitting in the catbird seat. You'd have to get 125 signatures to start an action against the current NC and of course, as an appointed official the current RAL is immune to the provisions of this Article. Even if you argue that "constituents" limits petition signatures to people who are eligible to vote for that position, this still means that only three people will be required to institute a recall election against Richard. Guess how many people voted against him in his last election. Maybe I'm overly concerned about this, but I have a hard time believing that this sort of situation was the intent of the BRC. If you have concerns about it, you can contact the BRC Chairperson, Roger Swafford, at sagitta56@mchsi.com -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Beating a dead horse since 1998 posted by merope at 10:03 AM 0 comments Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Tongue-Tied Expect the unexpected...its Your Daily Board Show! PEACE AND QUIET: The Board was quiet overnight after its brief burst of activity early yesterday. There is no further public discussion of the proposed wording for the Logo poll, the Grievance Committee, Richard Pettys' trial, or the latest attempt to shut me up. Which I guess is a good thing, all together. USGENWEB, LAND OF BAD IDEAS: The Bylaws Revision Committee, on the other hand, has not managed to keep itself still. Roger's Dream Team has come up with the following proposed revision to Article VIII, Section 10: "Any elected Advisory Board member may be removed from office for cause by 2/3 majority action of the AB, or, by a recall vote initiated by petition of constituents (if 100 votes elected, 51 petitioners shall cause a recall vote). Cause for removal by the AB is limited to continued, gross, and willful neglect of the duties of office. Causes for removal by constituents may include, but is not limited to, the following offenses: gross dereliction of duty, excessive failure to participate in Advisory Board votes, ethics violations, or conduct characterized by a lack of fairness and good faith such as disparaging, bigoted or grossly offensive behavior that could be injurious to the project, its members or representatives. The petition must be posted on the BOARD-L mailing list at least thirty (30) days before the vote takes place. Any vote to remove an officer must be preceded by a presentation of facts showing cause for removal and shall allow for rebuttal by the officer in question before the vote takes place." We find this interesting for a number of reasons. 1) There's nothing quite like giving an exclusive, insular, secretive club a free pass to make itself even more exclusive. If this were to pass, we can just imagine how long the rare dissident who manages to get elected will last among hostile peers. The motion as worded will simply allow 11 people (or as few as 6) to overturn an election whenever they get their panties in a twist over something. 2) We are also amused by the provision that among the "offenses" for which one can be thrown out of office is "conduct...such as disparaging, bigoted, or grossly offensive behavior..." Note that such conduct doesn't actually have to be injurious, someone just needs to think it may be injurious. Why don't they just say that Board members can't publish newsletters that are critical of the Board and be done with it? 3) We also note, and we are sure this is just an oversight, that the removal provisions only apply to elected officials. So appointed replacement members are home free. In other words, Betsy Mills doesn't have to worry about losing her job if she's snarky to a project member by, for example, calling them a jerk. We know that the project has sorely lacked any sort of recall ability for elected officials at the national level. Board members that do engage in negligent conduct should be removed, but that conduct needs to be defined very specifically, and any recall should come only after a vote of the electorate, not on the whim of a small group of pals working in secret. And if the electorate decides that a Board member needs to go, then the Board should have no ability whatsoever to overturn that decision. Upon the presentation of a petition with the requisite number of verified signatures, the Board should be required to have the EC run a recall election and the Board must be bound by the results. Period. I sometimes wonder what they smoke over there, but you know, right about now, I am sure Roger is basking in the warm glow of Board approval. Maybe a good belly rub and a Snausage is all it takes... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Gone to the dogs since 1998 posted by merope at 5:35 AM 0 comments Tuesday, January 18, 2005 Nothing To See Here Folks Put your hands together...its Your Daily Board Show! PEDAL TO THE METAL: In the interests of speeding through pending Board business, HRH Shari "We Are Not Amused" Handley posted the following: "In the interest of moving more quickly through agenda items, I'm calling for discussion/action on several items at once...I would like to get to some of the items that have been on the backlog and it seems to me necessary for us to multitask to a certain extent." [We note for the record that Don Kelly wholeheartedly approved of the approach and said in support: "...You may employ a committee of one on some of these...One riot, one ranger." We are not making this up, I swear.] LOGO MY LEGGO: The topics Shari is choosing to multitask on are varied. First up was some proposed wording for the upcoming logo poll: "Shall the USGenWeb Project have one official logo which each member site will be required to display prominently, or shall there be one main official logo and some acceptable alternatives that member sites can choose from to display prominently?" She noted that the proposed wording was "rough" and asked for some input from other Board members, but so far none have offered an opinion. I personally thought the motion establishing this poll specified a choice between one official logo and "more than one" official logo. CLEARLY, WE NEED MORE SECRET COMMITTEES: Next up on the "hurry, hurry" agenda is the formation of a new Grievance Committee. [We don't recall this being on the published agenda; aren't you supposed to finish formal agenda items before you go adding stuff?] Shari posted a longish message about the perceived need for a Grievance Committee for those "cases in which mediation fails to result in an agreement," and "grievance matters will need to be brought before the Advisory Board for a ruling." Shari proposed to "appoint a Grievance Committee from among the AB membership"; her choice for chair is "Mediation Coordinator" Betsy Mills. She asked for two additional Board members to step up and volunteer, as well as two alternates. She proposed the following guidelines for this Grievance Committee: "...The committee of three, plus the original parties to the failed mediation, will be subscribed to an empty list. The committee will hear the grievance and evidence, ask any questions it needs to in order to get as clear a picture of the situation as possible, and issue a ruling which would be binding upon all parties to the grievance...Either party to a grievance may ask for an appeal of the Grievance Committee ruling. The Advisory Board is not obligated to hear an appeal. If an appeal is filed, there will be a simple poll of the Advisory Board asking if the appeal should be heard. A simple majority of those voting will rule as to whether an appeal will be heard by the full Advisory Board. If the majority of the AB decides NOT to hear the appeal, then the ruling of the Grievance Committee will stand and will then be final. If the majority of the AB decides that an appeal WILL be heard, both parties will be asked to submit one written statement, explaining their position and why they feel the ruling should or should not be overturned. These statements will be posted to the AB's executive session list, and a decision will be made based on the information provided in the statements. A 2/3 majority of the AB members voting will be required to overturn a ruling of the Grievance Committee." Yes, this is a FABULOUS idea! When you have a difficult problem you can't work out, the BEST thing to do is have another Sekrit Committee to handle it! ESPECIALLY another Sekrit Committee full of nothing but Board members! CLEARLY this will solve the problem and bring peace to the land! Seriously, does this not sound like a lot of "make work" for already over-taxed representatives that will not resolve the problem? Whatever the problem is. Its not actually clear that there is a problem. Are a lot of mediations terminated without reaching a satisfactory conclusion for at least one of the parties? Has there been an outcry for another level of hoops to jump through? What is not clear is just why having three more Board members hear the evidence [one of whom is Betsy "CCs have no rights" Mills] will somehow make anyone happy or satisfied with the results. What happens when the parties to mediation/grievance stick their thumbs up at whichever Board members happen to reviewing the evidence and tell them to take a hike? What happens when a Board member is a party to a grievance? What the process needs, is 1) clear guidelines about when and how to file a grievance [these exist now, but are hard to find]; 2) non-Board members participating as voting mediators; 3) clear and timely communication between the mediators and the parties as to when the mediation will begin, how long it is expected to take, and how long it will be before the parties know the outcome [I would expect that the mediator(s) would need time to review the information they have received]; 4) some kind of realistic up-front assessment from the mediators as to what can be expected as to the outcome; and 5) a requirement that all project members use the process. There are currently only 16 members who can bypass the grievance process to have another project member punished and that's hardly fair to the rest of us. NOW YOU SEE 'EM, NOW YOU DON'T: Speaking of grievances, we recall that just a couple of weeks ago, new Mediaton Coordinator Betsy Mills told a CC who had asked about a months-old grievance he filed with her that it was in a very long queue. Interestingly enough, that very same grievance has already made it to mediation. So, we are wondering, what happened to the queue? Did they work their little AButts off to get through it? Possible, but doubtful. Did they jump this plaintiff to the head of the line? Hardly fair. Or was there no queue to begin with? We have suspected for some time that either 1) there are very, very few grievances filed; or 2) there are a ton, and they fall through the cracks because no only really gives a shit about them unless they can be used for some advantageous purpose. So, you know what we'd really like to see from our fabulous new Mediation Coordinator? A monthly report. Doesn't have to be anything spectacular, just a monthly listing of the grievances received, the number that went to mediation, and the number resolved. It wouldn't violate any gag rules and would give the membership some idea of how long they will have to wait to have their own grievance addressed. If this silly Grievance Committee thingie goes through, they can add that to the list of things to report on. AND FINALLY: There has been no more word publicly regarding Shari's attempt to have the Board expel me from the project. We've exchanged a couple more emails, but she seems to have fallen silent on the subject with no real resolution between us. The Board has stopped discussing it entirely on the public list. The "open letter" by Richard Pettys published here yesterday is making the rounds, as are the various members' responses to it. [My favorite: "ZZZZZZZZ" from Don Kelly] Although I appreciate the sentiment and the effort, I must state for the record that I think asking Shari to resign is a bit much. She did a dumb thing but its hardly worth putting the project and the EC through another election over. Shari's probably not an entirely bad person; the same thing happened to her that seems to happen to most Board members: they circle the wagons, lose all perspective, and become insanely righteous about the stupidest things. I have no doubt that she learned a painful lesson from this little episode and it should end there. Bonus Quote o' the Day: "This method is dooable." --Don Kelly, about the proposed Grievance Committee procedues [dooable?] -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show On the outside looking in since 1998 posted by merope at 6:30 PM 0 comments Monday, January 17, 2005 A Title Would Be Nice No news is good news...its Your Daily Board Show! ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: The Board's public list has been quiet since Saturday afternoon, probably while they plot and scheme in secret how best to display my head on a pike outside the castle. Ah well...at least a handful of "non-responsive SCs" can breathe easier while the Board's attention is otherwise engaged. A SHOW OF HANDS: I will take this opportunity to thank the many of my readers who have written to me (and to the Board, in some cases) to express their support. Many of you have cc'd me on your messages to the Board and forwarded their somewhat salty replies back to me. It has been, shall we say, enlightening. We have all been here before, and I don't expect the outcome to be any different than any other time. It is said that the pen is mightier than the sword, but in a straight up fight the sword will win every time. WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE SALUTE YOU: In that vein, Richard Pettys cc'd me on a "open letter" to the Board earlier today, and has written to ask that I publish it. So here it is: ++++++ "Madam NC, Members of the Advisory Board and Project Members: I write with respect to "Password-gate", the current hot-topic issue involving the NC and Teresa Lindquist. First and foremost, Teresa Lindquist did nothing wrong. She did not hack servers. She did not compromise lists or do outlandish things. Did she look at confidential information? She probably did. Did she have the right to look at this information? She probably did not. Did she do anything nefarious? Absolutely not. And the NC wants to expel her from the project? I submit that the only one who should be expelled from the project is the NC who violated confidentiality in requesting that Teresa Lindquist be expelled from the project. In so doing, Ms. Handley violated the by-laws (Article XIV), Sturgis and the policies of the AB with regard to personnel matters. Moreover, I would think that the act of posting passwords for project-related email lists and things of a similar nature would also be violative of the by-laws, even if only being a form of dereliction of duty. Moreover, Ms. Handley created this situation by posting this information in the first place. It was not posted on a private network server. It was not behind a firewall. It was published on a rootsweb server. It was published on an html page and posted on the internet for all to see. Anyone that had access to the internet had access to this information. While I have seen members of the AB do some boneheaded things, I think that this is about the most stupid thing I have seen done by a member of the AB. And in so doing, she compromised her personal security and the security of members of the USGenWeb Project. Therefore, I personally and publicly call upon Shari Handley to immediately resign the post of National Coordinator and call for an election to fill the remainder of her term post haste. In the event that Ms. Handley is unwilling to resign her post, I call upon the Representative-at-Large and all other members of the Adsvisory Board to bring a motion to suspend Ms. Handley from her post and from membership for a period of sixty (60) days or the conclusion of an investigation and hearings, if deemed necessary, whichever shall be later in time. In the event that the NC refuses to resign and the AB takes no action, it is incumbent upon us, the membership of this project, to take the steps necessary to ensure that similar behavior does not continue. Regards, Richard Pettys, Jr. Resident Dissident and Suspended Member ++++++ Heh, "Password-gate". I like that... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Marching to battle with a pen since 1998 posted by merope at 6:28 PM 0 comments Sunday, January 16, 2005 Fold, Spindle & Mutilate Here we go again...its Your Daily Board Show! WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK: Reaction to Shari Handley's notification that she would be asking the Board to expel me has been widespread. The Board list [which I am no longer privileged to receive] has been relatively quiet, with just a few comments: "...I would say it was the NC's booboo for putting the passwords online to begin with." --David Morgan "...I also agree that a mistake was made by the NC...What I do find reprehensible is that why wasn't Shari told immediately? Why did certain people have to scout around looking for what they could find...posting the password on a blog and making a joke out of it...This is total and complete lack of respect for Shari and for this project as a whole...This is not a team player, but, one who appears to be working against and not for this project...This truly is a sad day for all of us." --Jan Cortez [I might argue that a "sad day for all of us" was the day that Jan fired Pam Reitsch for no reason, but hey, what do I know?] "Shari's lapse in having the information available on line...does not excuse someone else's behavior in hacking in, stealing it, and publishing it." --Angie Rayfield [*sigh* NONE of which happened] Thus far, there have been no other comments from Board members on the public list, but I imagine that the sekrit list is hopping. Given that I handed my own head to them on a platter, they must be beside themselves with happiness. ITS NOT ALL ABOUT ME: Yes, there is other business going on in USGenWeb. There is still a trial ongoing, but there has been no further information on that, and now that the Board is distracted by other things, there may be no further information for awhile. A few days ago the Bylaws Revision Committee announced the topics it will be considering for revision, following the Board's denial of their request to be able to present the revisions to the membership as a unit. The BRC will be considering the following topics: Composition of the Advisory Board; Duties and Qualifications of the Advisory Board; Advisory Board Procedures; State Projects; Special Projects; Grievance Procedures and Appeals Process. The amendments page that Roger keeps up has been modified to remove the suggested revisions and comments that the BRC formerly spent so much time considering for everything but those topics. They are still aiming for a April 1, 2005 deadline for submission of final amendments to the Board. We haven't heard anything further on Betsy's "emergency" amendment to eliminate the Census Project and Tombstone Project seats in favor of a single Special Projects seat. Her solicitation for state sponsors has showed up on a few state and regional lists, but does not seem to have engendered much discussion other than on the SW/SC list. OK, BACK TO ME: As is usual in USGenWeb, sides are being drawn and hyperbole is flying about uncontrolled. Of course, I have my supporters and detractors, and Shari has her supporters and detractors. To hear some people tell it, I'm just this side of Joan of Arc and to others I'm the basest sort of criminal. Angie Rayfield, for example, is using whatever pulpit she can find to flog the idea that someone "hacked into" Shari's files and "stole" information, when in reality the page in question was publicly posted. I have no idea how the person who sent me the URL found it, but however they found it, its not like it was a file tucked away in the bowels of an ftp directory. It was a published and publicly available website. Root$web, by the way, is very studiously staying out of this. We heard that someone filed a grievance with the Board over Shari's lack of common sense, and cc'd RW's abuse address. The response from RW at least was swift and very, very noncommittal. Something along the lines of "its USGenWeb's business and no RW security was compromised, so there's no need for Rootsweb to be involved." Anyways, here are some sample comments from your fellow project members on the Topic du Jour: "I would hardly say that Shari is guilty of a breach of ethics in this situation. Was it unthinking? Yes. Should security have been placed at a higher premium than convenience? Yes. But the person in the wrong here is the person who hacked in, the person who stole the information, and the person who chose to publish it." --Angie Rayfield, USGENWEB-SE-L "Merope may well have had a positive intention for the recent postings at DBS, but...it's usually most effective to correct in private, while passing on deserved praise in public...I know many of you think it's perfectly okay to attempt your corrections in "public" and perhaps that works for you, but my experience has taught me that it seldom accomplishes the desired improvement...I believe it would have been best for the project if the problem had been pointed out by private email to the NC and only diseminated more broadly if that was ignored." Mike St. Clair, USGWP-CC "Is Shari H.'s brain fried or MIA? I can not believe she is stupid enough for starters to even put such a page on an internet server...what the hell would have made her believe she could place such information on an internet server and yet still have them be safe?...Now she has the crust...to actually go to the board and demand the person who found this information to be expelled. Why shouldn't she be expelled for being so stupid to place such "private and / or confidential" information on a less than private server? I have been with Genweb now basically since they started up...and I have seen a whole lot of crap happen throughout the years...Now, the person who was elected our "NC", is pulling something so stupid as placing passwords on her county directory and then when it is found, screaming at the person who notified her of her screw up...If they expel this person for letting Shari know this information was found and let Shari sit on her high and mighty throne, then I flat out give up." --Debi, USGWP-CC "...Why is it that Ms. Handley chose to go after Teresa on the BoardL instead of filing a grievance? Don't the rest of us have to file a grievance? Do we get to publically ask for some to be expelled?...If the rest of us have to follow procedure and file grievances with certain people, so does she, she is not above the rules of this membership...Ms. Handley used Poor judgement by putting her passwords on a public site...Teresa made a poor judgement by looking at the information. There was no gross breach of ethics. But if Teresa is up for being thrown out, then Ms. Handley should too, however, I just don't think that what either one of them did is WORTH going THAT far." --Paulette Carpenter, USGWP-CC "What is the point of this whole issue? Is this in anyone's imagination somehow good for the project?...Rootsweb does have terrible security problems. I will totally agree with that...The USGenWeb Board has made mistakes. They may even make more mistakes. Does the point of this have something to do with correcting some of the problems created by past mistakes?...Do some of you really believe that this is just "journalism at work here folks"?...Can we really feel good about saying that this "breach of ethics" is the fault of the NC because she mistakenly trusted what she understood about the technology?...I do not want to be judging any of my fellow volunteers as to their motives. However, I must say that any pretense that there is something noble or dignified about this matter is nonsense." --Mike Jarvis, USGWP-CC "...ANYONE with an ftp account at RW may view the entire contents of anyone else's ftp directory. That is not hacking...the NC has placed security-sensitive material ONLINE and viewable by hundreds and hundreds of persons. Now that the breach has been discovered, she is pointing fingers in a direction that is off by 180 degrees. Maybe there is need for a new compass?" --Keith Giddeon, USGENWEB-SE "...what about the posting of the intent to expel T on a public list....Are you overlooking the administrative deficiencies of the NC in your criticism of T? "It's okay if we do it, but you can't" mentality of the AB is recognized by many of us...the base problem is the lack of respect given to T and many other members of this organization by elected persons. You don't get respect unless you give respect. It was a long overdue payback for T and she could have been much more malicious than simply pointing out on a public list that S goofed. Knowing what T has gone through at the hands of RW and the AB I sincerely admire her restraint." --Don Tharp, USGWP-CC BTW, the DISCUSS list has been silent as a tomb through all this, but we have a very funny mental image of Tina "Not On My Watch" Vickery poised expectantly over her "SMITE" key in readiness for the first poor schmuck that dares to ask about it. SETTING PRECEDENT: We are reminded that Shari isn't the only Board member who posts passwords to a publicly accessible place. A loyal reader sent us a list of 336 account passwords from 2003 that were once posted and publicly available in Betsy Mills' ftp directory. The list is complete with the name of the account, the email address of the account holder, and the assigned password. We vaguely remember posting about this back in 2003, when the list was originally discovered and when Betsy still worked for Root$web [we believe as the person who set up new accounts], but we don't remember there being such a hoo-ha over it. MAKING NICE: I was surprised when I opened my inbox this morning to find a message from Shari. She normally doesn't deign to acknowledge mail from me. It wasn't as snarky as it might have been under the circumstances, and she seems to have moved into a "more hurt than angry" phase. She dwells more on the issues she has over the negative personal publicity than anything having to do with supposed ethical breaches on either side. So I've responded, and maybe this will be the start of some sort of productive dialog. Maybe not. But wouldn't it be novel if we could resolve this between the two of us like grownups? Maybe we could set a precedent or something! -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Hoping for the best since 1998 posted by merope at 11:25 AM 0 comments Saturday, January 15, 2005 Serious Breach of Ethics From the briar patch...its Your Daily Board Show! TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS: I wake up this morning, turn on the PC, go to read my mail, and find a nice little message telling me that I have been unsubbed from BOARD-L. Its petty and vindictive, but that is the Way of the Board, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. So I trot on over to the list archives and find that the Board has dropped the "nonresponsive SC" discussion for something much more interesting: expelling me from USGenWeb. Yep. Shari managed to do no more public business yesterday than posting a self-serving message excusing herself for being so unbelievably stupid as to publish her list passwords to a publicly accessible web page, and accusing yours truly of a "serious breach of ethics." What I particularly love about the post is that she scrupulously avoids mentioning my name. The full post is here, but here are some of the more delightful excerpts: "Yesterday evening, someone...compromised the security of several of the RootsWeb mailing lists I am admin for...among others, this person accessed the BOARD-EXEC list utilities using my password, then published the password online...this person got ahold of the URL for my computer's "home" page...which contained links to sites I and my family frequently visit...I had placed the page online so that it could be accessed through any of my computers and so that updating it would be a one-step process...it was my understanding that the page could not be spidered or otherwise found...So the links to all of my listowner utilities pages included the passwords to save some time when I accessed them, taking me directly to the utility page and bypassing the password entry page...The information on the page was not intended to be public. What this person did, using stolen passwords to access password-protected, private and/or confidential information belonging to me as an individual and to The USGenWeb Project as an organization, then publishing that information AND the stolen passwords, is reprehensible...I ask that the Advisory Board take action regarding this very serious violation, a critically serious ethical breach. I will ask that the AB expel this person from USGenWeb outright." Proving once again that a sense of humor is a rare and beautiful thing in USGenWeb, along with any sort of reasonable grasp of reality. I didn't compromise any security or steal any passwords, Shari posted them to a public website. Yeah, I did go in and look at the sooper-sekrit list's settings and publish a few of them. Hoo boy, who knew that the fact that BOARD-EXEC has 17 subscribers and isn't currently moderated was some kind of state secret? I published exactly one password and didn't tell anyone what it was for until it had been changed. In fact, I deliberately waited until Shari had time to remove the page in question and change the passwords before I published yesterday's story. I even made sure she'd done so before I went to press. Did I get any thanks for this? What do you think? You notice there's no apology in there from Shari to the Board and the Project for publicly posting sekrit Project information. After all, the situation could have been far, far worse than a few silly jokes. I could, for instance, have not told Shari that some unknown number of persons had her passwords and let her find out the hard way. She's lucky I'm not as malicious and vindictive as she is. But since the obvious seems to have escaped Her Highness' notice, I sent Shari the following email this morning: "You know Shari, I did you a favor by telling you I had your passwords. I didn't have to do that, and since I got them from someone else, there's no telling who else had them or for how long they had them. Next time you are stupid enough to publish stuff like that on the internet, maybe you should consider lightening up when someone has a little harmless fun at your expense." We've no doubt this will be a slam-dunk, unanimous verdict; its probably already over and they're just trying to find the right Sturgis gloss to put on it. Whatever. Must be nice to have a crew of minions to help with payback when you've been called on the carpet for being an idiot. If I were a Board member, right about now I'd be wondering about the suitability for office of a National Coordinator who published 20+ passwords to a publicly accessible webpage for her personal convenience. I guess my "critically serious ethical breach" will draw attention away from that little "critically serious professional failure" in favor of once again publicly dumping on a project member. What is that old saying about killing the messenger? I told you they had their panties in a knot... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show The Board's doormat since 1998 posted by merope at 7:45 AM 0 comments Friday, January 14, 2005 Queen For A Day Living large...its Your Daily Board Show! KEYS TO THE KINGDOM: Well, there's no Board news this morning, but we can guess the gang has its panties in a collective knot over in the Sekrit Sandbox. Yesterday, a little bird dropped off this very interesting URL: http://www.rootsweb.com/~mdsomers/start.htm. Don't worry, its gone now, but for some unknown length of time its been online, freely and publicly available. What was interesting about it was 1) it belongs to Shari Handley, the hapless National Coordinator of USGenWeb, and 2) it contained the passwords for over 20 Root$web mailing lists, including the sooper-sekrit CAMPAIGN98 [there's a blast from the past], USGWCONF, USGWCONF2, and BOARD-EXEC, along with some public lists like USGENWEB-ALL, USGENWEB-SE, and STATE-COORD-L, lists for the bylaws, brochure, newsletter and promotions committees, and some assorted family and county mailing lists. The page also contained her banking information and login information for her email, as well as links to apparently much visited sites, including some church-y stuff [she's apparently a Methodist, who knew? Methodists are usually more fun], all her county and state USGenWeb pages, half a dozen search engines and other internet tool sites, and a number of links to brightly colored, noisy sites oriented to pre-teen girls and mostly involving dolls. So after I got up off the floor, I checked it out. The passwords were all good and I got to have the distinctly odd feeling of being NC for a few minutes. My first thought was "what the hell does a single organization need with so many secret lists?" At current count there are four, and that does not include the committee lists like BYLAWS and whatever the EC is using these days. My second thought was "Hoo boy! This could be fun!" So I poked around a bit. Little known BOARD-EXEC facts: there are currently 17 subscribers [one Board member is subbed twice] including Roger Swafford and Mike St. Clair, its not moderated, the digest goes out every 24 hours, Shari doesn't allow Root$web's little commercial blurbs or Ancestry Message Board posts, and if messages to you bounce 12 times, you're off the list. I did check and there were no archives to any of the secret lists. I admit I did briefly consider having even more fun with this little gift. My first thought was to change all the notification settings and sub myself to BOARD-EXEC and USGWCONF2 [where Richard's trial is kinda sorta being held, when they have the time for it] and see how long I could get away with it. My next thought was to actually go in and make myself the new owner of BOARD-EXEC and see how long I could get away with THAT. But those things, although soooo tempting, seemed kind of legally risky. Then I thought it might be fun to unsub everyone from ALL of Shari's lists [remember, there were more than 20 listed], or put all the lists to moderated status so she'd be swamped with posts to approve, but that just seemed overly malicious. My last thought was to do something harmless but funny, like changing the BOARD-EXEC subject line append from [BOARD-EXEC] to something like [BITE ME] and see how long it took them to notice. In the end though, I wimped out and ended up sending Shari an email message letting her know her passwords had been comprised [although mostly by her own stupidity] and going to bed. This morning the webpage is gone and all the passwords have been changed. I'll just have to be content with the fact that, at the very least, she probably spent a few hours last night checking subscriber lists, verifying her list settings, and changing 20+ passwords. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Like a kid in a candy shop since 1998 posted by merope at 7:32 AM 0 comments Thursday, January 13, 2005 eUxSeGcW Its a contest! I know the title word looks a bit odd...but think about it for a minute. 12 quatloos to whoever can figure out what it is. :) -Teresa Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Cryptic since 1998 posted by merope at 7:05 PM 2 comments One Cannot Live By Innuendo Alone Posting recklessly...its Your Daily Board Show! JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM: Richard Pettys, defendant in the latest USGenWeb Trial of the Century, sent us this statement in response to Shari Handley's "NC Report," published a few days ago. Apparently he was a bit tweaked that Shari implied that the excessive delays in his trial are due to his requests for recess. "I would like to clarify something Shari said in the NC Report. While it is true that we have requested a couple of recesses, the delays on our side have been few and far between. After my first choice for my representative was denied, I asked for a brief recess in order to select an alternative representative and to give her time to come up to speed and the AB granted recess of a week. Thereafter, Paulette notified them that a recess might be necesary because of what appeared to be the impending death of my grandfather. Thankfully, he remains among the living, although his condition is not improving and will not improve. My sincere thanks to those who have been a source of comfort. The AB's response was that they would continue with their deliberations during this period. A couple of days later we did request a four-day recess. The AB did not respond to this request, and later adjourned the monthly meeting. Finally, a recess was requested for a week around Christmas time. No response was ever had to that request." So. There have apparently been but three requests for brief recess, totalling about two and a half weeks of time. Two of them were ignored, and none of them would have precluded the Board from continuing its work on the trial [although we'll give them the holidays; no one works over the holidays]. Yet, here we are...seven and a half months out from Richard's suspension, and apparently no closer to a verdict than we were then. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Wretched excess since 1998 posted by merope at 6:20 AM 0 comments Wednesday, January 12, 2005 Driveby Holy cow, Batman...its Your Daily Board Show! WHO'S ON FIRST: There was some more minor "let's shame them publically" chitter-chatter on the topic of "non-responsive SCs," all of which missed the point of discussing "non-responsive SCs." Shari reported that two of the recalcitrant SCs have responded with their information and Bettie Wood noted that she doesn't think John McCoy is the ASC of ORGenWeb anymore [although he is still listed on the page]. There is also some brief discussion of the new AKGenWeb pages, and we are saddened to learn that Capt. Pat Smith is no longer the SC for that fine state. He was one of the oldest of the USGenWeb oldtimers and rumor has it that he was run out of town because he wouldn't let Board member Don Kelly have a chunk of the project. [Hmmm...come to think of it, Don wanted a piece of GAGenWeb too. See a pattern?] NEWS TO USE: The announcement of the upcoming poll regarding the logos has gone out, and I was surprised to learn that if one wishes to vote in this poll, one must register. So I hied myself over to the Election Committee webpage, and what do you know? You have to register for ALL elections now! And I thought I wasn't getting passwords all these years because the EC was playing cute. [Although, I do note this phrase: "Members who were USGenWeb volunteers before February 1, 2004 were automatically registered." I have most definitely been a member since before February 1, 2004. Hmmm...] Anyways, if you want to vote in the silly poll, you have to register between January 12 and January 26. No dates for the poll have been announced yet. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Spitting into the wind since 1998 posted by merope at 5:59 AM 0 comments Monday, January 10, 2005 Is It Monday Already? Step right up folks...its Your Daily Board Show! GOING NEGATIVE: In current Board business, NC Shari Handley announced that the request by the Bylaws Revision Committee to rescind Motion 04-13D is denied with 11 NO votes and one abstention. [We suppose that Roger will be re-opening Article II for discussion after all.] Shortly after brushing off the BRC, Shari turned her harsh eye on those SCs who refuse to give the NC their addresses and phone numbers. According to a request for discussion posted very very early this morning, one SC and four ASCs have failed to provide their contact information to the NC as required by the bylaws. After providing a detailed time-line of her multiple requests both to STATE-COORD-L and to individual email addresses, Shari has asked the Board to discuss how to "resolve" the issue. [Apparently our scofflaw NC is on a bylaws-enforcement binge. O the irony.] The ensuing "discussion" consists of Don and Betsy noting that they can get three of the five to provide the requested information [heh, maybe the trick is to get someone other than Shari to ask]. So, with any luck, the Board will be able to entirely avoid the larger issue, which is what to do with project members who thumb their noses at the Board. MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH: No, we haven't forgotten that there is an ongoing trial, now in its umpteenth month. There hasn't been much to report, so we've been off snooping. And we found this in one of Darilee's little Board reports from January 5: "I volunteered to chair the hearing committee and have reconvened the hearing... Yes, I've been working on it and seriously hope to be able to make an announcement next week..." Now, what do you suppose those scamps are cooking up? KUMBAYA: We are late on this one, but it appears that despite the lack of interest expressed in her own state, Betsy "Miss Fixit" Mills has pressed forward with her proposed amendment to the bylaws. On January 1, she presented it to the fine members of the SW/SC regional list, noting that ARGenWeb would be sponsoring it, and requesting co-sponsors. This amendment proposes to "fix" the Census Project mess by eliminating all but one "Special Project" seat on the Board, and additionally requests that the Board declare the matter "urgent" enough to invoke the emergency clause of the bylaws. Why something that has puttered along quietly enough for several years now should suddenly constitute an emergency is not explained. The normally pretty quiet list has been, shall we say, hopping. Betsy is basically trying to give sole control of the Special Project seat to Linda Lewis, but claims to only want to reunite the divided, soothe the wounds, and give votes all around. More sober heads have pointed out that glossing over the "USGW has two census projects" issue won't actually resolve the fact that there are two census projects, nor will it result in giving both projects a vote, since the Board would have to approve one or both of them as a Special Project before their members could vote. And just which project do you imagine the Board would pick? The one that is a registered 501c3 with a registered trademark? Its an interesting question. Their hearts are with Maggie's pretender project, but they may end up having to vote their wallet, since defending trademark violations can be expensive. If the Board continues its Solomonic approach of not formally recognizing either of them, then really nothing will change, except that an eternally empty Census Project seat will no longer stand in mute testimony to the Board's failure. In any case, sides have been chosen, names have been called, and threats of moderation have gone out. This stuff just never ceases to be amusing. The thread's on USGENWEB-SW-L, if you are interested. These yahoos ought to learn to leave the rewriting of history to the pros... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Showing 'em how its done since 1998 posted by merope at 7:41 PM 0 comments Saturday, January 08, 2005 Knock Yourself Out Way too early on a Saturday morning...its Your Daily Board Show! BOARD SNOOZE: There is not much to report on this cold and sleety morning. Five more Board members vote NO on the BRC request, pretty much dooming it to failure. Several Board members take the opportunity to publicly stroke Betsy "Large and In Charge" Mills for her generosity in offering to "coordinate" grievances. Some comments: "The AB and NC has such a long menu to accomplish that delegation of responsibilities seems prudent." --Don Kelly "This is wonderful...I thank that we all have come to the conclusion that we need to delegate some of the duties in order to operate more efficiently." --Jan Cortez By way of personal reminiscence, I honestly don't recall grievances being all that big a part of my duties during my time as a Board member. When I was elected, I figured that based on all the hoo-hah Board members usually made about the crushing numbers of grievances they received I'd get a few dozen in my first weeks in office. I even made a separate inbox so I could keep track of them. But...nada. I don't recall ever personally receiving a single grievance during my time on the Board. [Note, my memory may be wrong on this and I am willing to be corrected.] Certainly the outgoing administration didn't hand over a roster of pending grievances and if I had received enormous numbers of grievances either personally or via BOARD-EXEC I'd remember it. During the eight or so months that Holly allowed me to participate in Board meetings we actually debated only one grievance that I recall. Admittedly, that one took forever and ended up being more about fighting with each other than with actually helping the members who filed the grievance, but still, it was only one. After Richard Harrison took over, there was the grievance filed by Betty Wood that the Board attempted to use to kick Tim Stowell out of the Project. But in two years, that's it. Most people who file grievances, and I know there are a few because they often send them to me as well, file them with their local representatives. After that, they usually have no further idea of what happens to them, unless their representative chooses to tell them. There is no Board accountability in the system whatsoever. If your representatives choose to sit on it, or outright refuse to represent you [as happened recently] your only recourse is to send it to others, such as the NC or the RAL, and as we have seen, they may tell you to bug off, its not their job. There has never been a mechanism to pass grievances along from one administration to another or even any standard on how to report out findings to the project or to the plaintiffs. When it feels like digging in the knife, the Board will make a public announcement of the outcome, complete with names and particulars, and occasionally even recommend that other project members take it on themselves to attack the plaintiff. Or they may vaguely allude to the fact that they are "considering a grievance" on their secret list. But usually the grievances just disappear. In the one grievance we handled while I was on the Board, after much debate we ruled in favor of the plaintiffs who had filed a grievance against their SC. However, the losing side in the voting immediately began screeching about bylaws and rules and logistics [their position could be summed up as "we can't enforce sanctions against the SC so to save face we should vote against the CC"], and the Board got caught up in its usual infighting. The CCs were never notified formally or informally that they had won, and as far as they know, the Board still has their grievance on its to-do list. Many of the grievances are filed by the more or less dispossessed members of USGenWeb, people that many call dissenters, disruptives, whiners, complainers, or worse, and the Board is usually more than happy to "acknowledge receipt" and call it a day. They are unlikely to find in their favor anyways and will more than likely ignore anything so inconvenient as fact. [However, should a grievance be filed by one of their own they can act swiftly and decisively, even to the point of staging a coup in two states, in order to right the egregious wrong done to such a fine person.] The Board is not known for debating disagreements on their merits, but makes its decisions based more on the personalities involved. Thus, they see no inherent conflict in themselves willfully and grossly violating the bylaws in order to put someone on trial for willfully and grossly violating the bylaws, and they blissfully find in favor of their friends in grievances because after all, they know their friends' hearts are pure and their intentions honorable, while those who file grievances against them only want to destroy USGenWeb. Its the same blinkered worldview that sees no problem with letting several people who had long standing personal issues with Tim Stowell sit in judgement of him at his trial. Over the years, the Board has tried to come up with ways to address the problems inherent with handling grievances when it has no real power to enforce its findings [unless, of course, they are willing to fire SCs]. The mediation process enacted several years ago has to all appearances been a bust, even after the Board made it a mandatory step in the process last year. Even its originators wouldn't use it and the Board itself ignores it in favor of immediate goals, such as the sanction of Project members not in its favor. Its buried deep in the bowels of the national website, and no recent filer of a grievance that I spoke with could recall being directed to it, although it contains detailed instructions on how to file grievances and how grievances will be handled. I can find no evidence that it has ever been used and half the Board members seem unaware of its existence; until recently, one of these was the new "Grievance Coordinator." So here we are now, with an unelected gatekeeper to "coordinate" grievances, a person who has throughout her lengthy tenure with USGenWeb shown considerable public and private animosity toward the very members of the Project she has been appointed to represent, who has played loose with truth when it suits her, and who apparently feels that CCs have no rights that the Board need concern itself with. Her appointment seems less likely to promote and encourage a fair grievance process for plaintiffs and defendants alike than to scare off any potential whiners who might dare to impinge on the Board's serenity by filing a complaint. After all, it is easy to efficiently handle grievances if no grievances are being filed. Them's the breaks... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, The Daily Board Show Over and done with since 1998 posted by merope at 8:55 AM 0 comments Friday, January 07, 2005 Fact is Stranger Than Truth A half wit is better than no wit...its Your Daily Board Show! MOVING RIGHT ALONG: USGenWeb NC Shari "Speedy" Handley seems to have found a most expeditious way to move Board business along: dispensing with motions, seconds and discussion periods entirely. Late last night, she called for a vote on the BRC request, 24 hours after she first posted the motion and a scant six hours after the last comment came in [god forbid a Board member should step away from their keyboard for a day]. Thus far five BMs have voted NO and one [Don Kelly] has recused himself because he is on the BRC. In what is either a backhanded slap at the membership, an abrupt change of heart, or a fit brought on by insomnia and overwork, Shari Handley last night announced that Betsy "the color of jerk" Mills has volunteered to serve as the Project's Grievance Coordinator. According to Shari, USGenWeb members with a grievance are encouraged to send them first to Betsy, who will then shepherd them through the mediation processes implemented by the Board last year, and periodically update the parties on the status of the grievance. Her job according to Shari "will be to ensure that grievances do not fall through the cracks and that every effort is made to bring them to a conclusion that is acceptable to all involved and to set up a method for parties involved in a grievance to be able to check on the status of their grievance." We find this most amusing. Why, less than a month ago, Betsy was calling a project member a jerk for asking her to update the status of his grievance and she went so far as to say that it wasn't her job and he should be contacting his real represenatives because she couldn't be bothered. At the time, she was completely unfamiliar with the mediation procedures instituted by the Board, and she so admitted in a later message to him. Its even more amusing that Betsy volunteered to be the Grievance Gatekeeper; I can imagine that more than one potential plaintiff will think twice before sending a missive off to someone with such an impressive lack of respect for the common membership. It might have been better if Shari picked someone that was actually a nice person to interface with the aggrieved rabble, but then again, that probably wasn't the point. If you put an ogre at the gate, fewer people will try to get through. Off to feed the monkeys... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Taking it on the chin since 1998 posted by merope at 5:25 AM 0 comments Thursday, January 06, 2005 USGenWeb Smackdown! On the bleeding edge...its your Daily Board Show! BOARD NEWS: Once the Board was back in session, Shari spammed the list with several general business messages. The first was the Election Committee report, which contained the usual EC drivel. Of note is that this is the last EC report filed by outgoing EC Chair Ellen Pack. She is turning over the reins to Tina Vickery, who also controls the DISCUSS-LIST and as of a month or so ago also controls MEGenWeb. [Eventually, USGenWeb will have about five people in all positions of power.] Among Tina's first orders of business was to post a call for EC volunteers, which Shari posted to the Board list. The next thing Shari posted was the "NC Report." I think this is the first time I have seen one of these. She welcomes Mike St. Clair to the Board Secretary position, reminds members of the existence of Bylaws Revisions Committee, and says that the EC is planning to run a poll regarding logos February 9-23. She also has this to say about the ongoing trial of Richard Pettys: "The closed-session disciplinary hearing will reconvene shortly, after a short break for the holidays. It has been slow going due to some requested recesses, as well as some new time constraints on my part. I am grateful to Darilee for volunteering to step in as moderator/chair of the hearing. It is anticipated that, with Darilee's help, work on the hearing can move at a more steady pace toward a conclusion." Interesting. The NC doesn't have the time to properly conduct a trial of a member. Do you get the impression that their hearts just aren't in this one to the extent they were with Tim's trial? The last business item posted by Shari is the request by the BRC to rescind Motion 13D. This motion requires that the BRC submit amendments to the bylaws that can be voted on individually. The BRC notes "The desire that members have maximum voice regarding each article by vote puts the right of the organization to function effectively from a cohesive "set of bylaws" in jeopardy. The adoption of 04-13, although legal, is contrary to the parliamentary authority." Board members' reactions to the BRC request are swift and quite negative: "My fear is that voters will vote 'no' on the entire package because they do not like a single aspect of the proposed changes." --Larry Flesher "I'm one of the people that would vote 'no' on the entire package - there are some revisions that I feel create more problems than they solve...While I appreciate the BRC's opinion, I would like to respectfully point out that HOW the revision/amendments are presented to the membership for a vote is not an issue for their concern...it has been specified that their revisions should be able to be broken down into separate components, so that members may vote on individual amendments...It will be the responsibility of the AB to determine...whether the revisions should be presented as a package to the membership for a vote, or whether separate amendments should be presented in accordance with the current by-laws." --Angie Rayfield "I am also one of those that would vote "no" on the entire package and have heard from many others who say there is no way they will vote for the revisions as one package." --Betsy Mills "...if the bylaws are voted on as a package that they will never pass...Wouldn't it be easier to vote on the different amendments and get part of the job done now? At that point we would know what amendments need tweaking, because they don't meet with membership approval and the BRC could move on with those matters." --Jan Cortez "The motion was adopted...by a vote of 12-0. I see no reason to rescind. I[t] might be better to start over with a new committee." --David Morgan "...I strongly desire a rewrite...the by-laws as a group will never pass a vote of the membership. I was under the opinion that special elections would be called to vote on each section. Like the first of each month until the revision is complete." --Darilee Bednar At this point it looks like the BRC's request will be denied. Over on the BRC public discussion list, Roger Swafford who chairs the BRC, posted an impassioned [for him] explanation of why he requested the change: "...It has been said the BRC has not followed it charge. Please note that the committee is the Bylaws "Revision" Committee...The task was undertaken by addressing articles one at a time for possible changes. There was nothing in our instructions specifically stating how the task was to be performed, nor were specific problems identified...during the process I posted responses to questions regarding how Sturgis defines a revision and how it was expected to be voted upon. Only after reporting out were instructions changed to permit voting on each article by the membership. Why was the process not halted at some point before more than two years work were expended? The BRC is presently looking at a deadline to report out a second time...about 1 April 2005. It appears the overall concern is that members would reject the entire Revision because of one or two items if voted upon as a complete package...I would prefer that outcome to risking the future ability of the project to function with a cohesive set of bylaws." He makes a good point. The BRC continued its work without direction from the Board for two years and produced a revised set of bylaws. Only then did the Board decide to change its mandate to producing amendments. Sturgis is very clear on how each of those is to be handled. If they are amendments, then the procedure outlined in the bylaws must be followed and the potential for any of them to be passed is close to zero. Darilee's comment that the Board intends to hold a special election each month to vote on different amendments is surprising, since the current bylaws do not allow for that procedure, even in the Board could somehow make an emergency out of this. In this scenario, the worst thing we could end up with is some of the revisions passing and some failing, leaving us with unworkable bylaws. Revisions, however, must be handled in the same way as the original bylaws were passed, by a straight up or down vote by the project, with a majority winning. Depending on how you feel about the proposed bylaws, the worst outcome in this instance is that they fail and we have the same bylaws we've always had or they pass and we get new bylaws that are even worse. Take your pick. SEX, DRUGS AND GENEALOGY: Yesterday's Deseret News [Utah] reported on a routine traffic stop that turned into a drug bust. When a car failed to use its turn signal, police pulled it over and found wallets, credit cards, passports, blank birth certificates, and a portable methamphetamine lab. As part of their investigation, the police visited the business site of Heritage Creations, a business that does genealogy research, publishes genealogy magazines, and offers tours of the Salt Lake City area. Apparently the son of the owner of Heritage Creations was trading information obtained from recent purchasers for meth. Police believe the operation was ongoing only for two weeks to a month and there may be a hundred or so victims, so any readers who have purchased items from Heritage Creations, including Heritage Quest magazine, in that time frame might want to keep a close eye on their credit report. The owner of Heritage Creations, Leland Meitzler, has posted an in depth and very personal article about this on his blog. -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Ruining it for everyone since 1998 posted by merope at 8:34 AM 1 comments Tuesday, January 04, 2005 A Brand Spanking New Year Onward and upward...its Your Daily Board Show! SAME STUFF, DIFFERENT YEAR: As of late yesterday evening, the Circus is back in town. Shari welcomed the Board back to business and posted the following new agenda: "1. Call to order 2. Continue with closed-session hearing 3. Reading, correction, approval, or disposition of minutes 4. NC Report 5. New business a. BRC request b. Non-responsive State Coordinators c. Policy Statement: County sites vs. Archives as repository of collected data d. Evaluation of special projects e. Application received for possible new special project f. PR committee g. other 6. Begin Grievance Hearing in Closed Session when disciplinary hearing complete 7. Announcements 8. Adjournment" It is remarkably similar to the old agenda. We note that the trial of Richard Pettys is still ongoing; perhaps they are trying for some sort of "bogus trial longevity" record. OUT THE DOOR: Shari also posted the December 2004 minutes and thanked departing Board Secretary Greta Thompson. IIRC, the new Board Secretary is Mike St. Clair. From my experience with him on the Bylaws discussion list, he seems like a swell guy. He's not going to challenge the status quo, but he can string sentences together with some talent, and that's pretty much what a BS needs to do. LAST CHANCE: Speaking of bylaws, the Bylaws discussion list was notified a couple of days ago that the Bylaws Revision Committee has declined to re-open Article II for discussion. The revised version of Article II currently posted to the BRC website is worded such that the management of USGenWeb (Board, SCs, Archives, etc.) will have every right to consider any data you post to any web page affiliated with USGenWeb to be the property of USGenWeb. This effectively reduces the Local Coordinator's status to that of a contributor and also removes Local Coordinator control of material submitted to their website by others. Revised Article 10 gives the project the right to retain all materials submitted by any contributor to any USGenWeb site, unless that contributor specifically says they don't want their materials kept. It should be the other way around: USGenWeb should not maintain materials given to LC's unless the contributors specifically say they can. The basic result of this proposed revision will be to treat LCs as mere caretakers of the sites they put so much work into [or not] and should they move on to greener pastures, USGenWeb will continue to reap the benefits of their hard work and genealogy connections long after they are gone. I don't usually go out on a limb on these sorts of things, but its a deal-killer for me. BTW, we've heard through a little bird that the "BRC request" on the recent agenda involves a request from the BRC that the Board lift its ludicrous insistence that the Project members be allowed to vote on the revised bylaws item by item. LAND OF THE LOST: We've heard strange and disturbing stories lately from the bowels of the old Root$web message boards. We've had a hard time tracking down details because there seems to have been no real policy announcement made, but it appears that certain posts on surname lists in particular but also on other lists are disappearing. When they reappear, they are reposted to something called the "DNA Announcements Board." These messages usually have to do with the announcement of a new surname DNA project and would not generally be considered off-topic for a surname list. Posts, both recent and months old, are being moved without submitters' consent and requests by submitters to know what is going on have been met with unsubscribes, moderation, or outright silence. It appears that some posts have been moved more or less randomly, as if Root$web is running some kind of program that searches for "DNA" in surname list posts and then moves anything it finds over to the Announcements list. People are more than a little pissed about this. The Root$web Help Desk is its usual unhelpful self, and Ancestry has gone so far as to claim that it has no control over Root$web. The Board-Admin mailing list buzzed with the news for a bit, and then were told that the topic was not suitable for the list. The little birds have been looking high and low, but no one can find a formal announcement that all DNA posts should be on a specific list. What we can find out is that the posts appeared to have started moving around August 2004, and posts several months old at that time were moved. Incidentally, we don't find a "DNA Announcements" list among Root$web's DNA list; the only general list is the highly technical DNA-GENEALOGY. It turns out that the "DNA Announcements" board is an Ancestry board. So, Root$web is apparently moving the posts from its area of influence over to Ancestry's. Speculation as to why they are doing this so secretly and why they won't discuss it are of course running rampant. Most speculations centers around Ancestry's recent partnership with a company called FamilyTreeDNA, a firm that does DNA testing for genealogical purposes. Although many of the posters in question do use FTDNA for their testing, the fear is that Root$web/Ancestry is moving all DNA posts off to a deserted backwater so that other companies in the field don't get free advertising. After all, once MyFamily.con buys FTDNA, that company will get a free link from Root$web's and Ancestry's front page. At that point, they will certainly not want their customer base to know of other companies out there. Eventually, surname studies using DNA testing won't be expensive, rare or inconclusive, and its always better to have your monopoly in place early. Off to the coal mines... -Teresa Lindquist Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show Been there, done that since 1998