JULY DBS 2005

Sunday, July 31, 2005
Barefoot In The Park
Your guess is as good as mine...its Your Daily Board Show!

ALL OR NOTHING: Well, never it let be said that the USGenWeb Advisory Board is not
endlessly entertaining. Shari, in her unseemly zeal to kill off Motion 05-12 once and for all, has
not proven to be a poster girl for either tradition or parliamentary procedure. Since yesterday's
DBS the following conversation has taken place:

Bettie: "Per Sturgis...'When it appears that all of the members who wish to speak have done so,
the presiding officer inquires, 'Is there any further discussion?' If there is not, the question is put to
vote.' That question was not asked...I am not ready to close discussion. In the postings of a
couple of AB members that have voted, they also indicated the belief that further discussion was
desired. Per Sturgis...'The presiding officer should never end discussion arbitrarily. It should be
ended only by the assembly, whether ny general consent..., by a vote on the motion to close
debate, or by a previously adotped limitation on debate.'"

Angie: "...what was not done...is to ask if there is any further discussion and to give people an
opportunity to speak if they wish....To insist on continuing with a vote under the circumstances is
clearly improper...you publicly chastised Bettie for calling the question while discussion of the
proposed amendment was under way. Although there had been over a week to discuss, you
refused to move to vote but insisted that you would have to wait to allow other board members
additional time to speak, despite the fact that there were no objections to beginning a vote at that
time. Now, you...insist on ignoring members and going ahead with a vote when discussion began
less than 48 hours before...The Chair is once again displaying blatant favoritism to one member
over another. While there's no requirement that the Chair feel impartial, and the Chair is free to
prefer whatever motion he/she wishes, the Chair may NOT choose a different set of rules for the
members and/or motions of preference."

Angie then moved "that the voting be cancelled and the discussion tabled until September 6th,
2005. The new board should take up the question after the Labor Day weekend." Jan seconded
the motion, and from this point forward, discussion got a bit, shall we say, heated:

Shari: "Bettie called the question while discussion was actively taking place. I called for the vote
after a nearly 30 hour period of no discussion...Are you saying that...each time a discussion has
ended and nobody has said anything for 24 or more hours, I should ask if there is further
discussion, and wait...ANOTHER 48 hours or so to be absolutely certain that nobody wants to
say something?...that is simply absurd."

Angie: "I made the mistake of voting because I...assumed that once the vote had begun, we were
forced to vote or remain silent. That's not the case, and Sturgis plainly says so...it's certainly a
common courtesy to ask if there's any further discussion and announcing WHEN you plan to
begin voting if there is no further discussion. Do you have to wait 48 hours after that? No,
although that's always been the courtesy extended to the board before...Is getting this done in a
hurry and adjourning more important than allowing Board members to discuss this properly?
Apparently you think so where *this* motion is concerned. You have a motion and a second
requesting that this entire discussion be tabled for the new board."

Shari: "The motion to table is out of order. A quorum has already been reached on the vote and
the outcome is already a foregone conclusion. You cannot table a motion while the vote is taking
place on it just because it becomes clear that your motion will be defeated. Ample time passed
without discussion to justify the call for the vote based on past precedence and practice. At this
point, a quorum has been more than attained. 11 members have voted, and...8 members have
already voted against it. The motion has failed." [We actually count 9 NO votes on Motion 05-12,
but our Esteemed NC was apparently flustered.]

Angie: "Bettie protested within 20 minutes of your calling for a vote, asking for additional time
for discussion...Are you saying that her protest should have come faster? My protest and motion
were made before a quorum had been reached. Are you saying that motions don't count if you
choose to ignore them long enough to reach the result that you want? No wonder so many project
members have such a low opinion of the politics of the project."

Bettie: "Madam NC...you are the one that is out of order for not acknowledging my
request & my right to continue discussion...I posted as soon as I can concerning an extension &
gave my reasons, & did so before the vote had reached it's end. I cannot prevent...life from
happening & keeping me offline...but even so I still spoke up as soon as I could & what's allowed
under Sturgis. You have denied my rights, & ignored my requests to continue, & the rights of
others that have stated that they wanted further discussion."

And that's where it stands. We predict that Shari, who can be both quite attentive and quite
speedy when she wants to be, will now be unavailable until as late as possible Monday, when she
will reconvene the Board with a new agenda that most likely will not include the grievance issue.
We are hard-pressed to understand Shari's obvious bias against and antagonism toward Angie's
motion, or the zeal to kill it without allowing the discussion that could have amended it into a
more palatable solution. While it could just be that she wanted to gain some closure on the motion
at the end of the month and clear the slate for the next month, we are wondering if perhaps the
issue has now become personal. In our experience, Shari doesn't handle opposition very well and
tends to get emotional and irrational quickly when people disagree with her. Bettie and Angie,
although making important larger points on procedure and fairness, have not exactly moved the
situation forward with their several protests and challenges. While we do agree that Shari has bent
herself like a pretzel to both thwart Angie's proposal and promote the proposals of others, at
some point you just have to realize its time to move on. Motion 05-12 is not ideal, and while
Shari's several attempts to deny it its day in the sun have been just short of shameful [not to
mention precedent-gutting], its not likely to have passed in any form. At this point, the Board
should sit down, perhaps with a mediator, and decide what they agree on [minimal Board
involvement, etc.] and what they don't agree on [open vs. closed meeting, etc.] in terms of
forming the GPC and work from there. This throwing out of motions and hostile amendments
willy-nilly is just not working.

Everyone seems to want to do something with grievances, or at least they claim to want to do
something with grievances, but nothing proposed thus far seems to spark enough interest or
passion for the Board to actually do something with grievances. They have spent literally a month
and a half on nothing but this one issue and they have moved no farther forward on it. The topic
itself first arose back in March. Perhaps they should now consider forming a committee to
determine the form and procedures of the committee that will someday [but not in my lifetime]
determine the form and procedures of the actual Grievance Committee. They could call it the
Grievance Procedures Committee Procedures Committee.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Running in place since 1998

posted by merope at 8:25 AM 11 comments   
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Can't Get There From Here
Take me out to the ballgame...its Your Daily Board Show!

OVER AND DONE WITH: The vote on Motion 05-12 currently stands at 7 NO votes and 3
YES votes; thus the motion has been defeated. A couple more Board members noted that a longer
discussion time would have been nice, and Bettie Wood in particular pointed out Shari's
departures from parliamentary procedure in calling the vote so abruptly. Although Shari ignored
the procedural issue, she did respond to the several Board members who pointed out that they
would have liked more time to discuss the motion: "In the approximately 48 hours after the
05-12A amendment was defeated, the only comments made were a note from [Angie] asking for
input on several points, a request by Bettie...to repost your original motion, and your response
posting it. From that last post...30 hours passed with no discussion or comments at all, and no one
else ever did offer any input or comments, so the vote was called." She also told them they'd be
free to submit a new motion if August if they wanted to do so.

THE DOTTED LINE: Here's a round-up of comments we've received so far from our request for
information on state internal election procedures:

ILGenWeb: "ILGenWeb has manditory elections and a complete set of procedures covering
aspects of the project, including elections, grievances, recall of SC, etc. Its not really new, it has
been a year since the ILGenWeb membership approved the procedures in the last SC election."
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilrreg/procedures.htm

NMGenWeb: "New Mexico does not have written guidelines. We have had only one real election,
but only one person ran. In NM they, don't include me in they, believe that the ASC can remain
the ASC forever because that particular ASC was around when the state organization was
formed. No matter who is elected to SC, the current ASC remains forever and ever. This has the
effect of leaving the same group in charge regardless of who is elected."

PAGenWeb: "The PAGenWeb has a set of by-laws, created by a committee of CCs and elected by
the PAGenWeb membership under Nate Zipfel's watch as SC. Cyndie Enfinger was duly elected
SC in an election last summer." http://www.pagenweb.org/policy.html

Some other links to state guidelines that we found online:

DEGenWeb: http://www.degenweb.org/guidelines.htm

IAGenWeb: http://iagenweb.org/state/by-laws.htm

INGenWeb: http://ingenweb.net/ingen_guidelines.htm

MDGenWeb: http://www.mdgenweb.org/guidelines.htm

MSGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~msgenweb/cc-guidelines.htm#basic

TNGenWeb: http://www.tngenweb.org/tngennet/bylaws99.htm

WYGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~wygenweb/bylaws.htm

This appears to be the extent of state projects that have posted procedures for the election of a
state coordinator. Please note that the list may be incomplete because states may not link to their
bylaws/guidelines or because we missed them. Many, many states have posted some sort of
CC-oriented guidelines, even if just a link back to the main USGenWeb requirements, but
state-level guidelines are quite rare, with less than a fifth of the states providing them. Again, if
your state is missing, please send info and/or a link.

Currently the USGenWeb bylaws do not require that SCs stand for regular election. They require
only that when there is a vacancy an election must be held to fill it, and recent attempts by
departing state coordinators to directly appoint their successors have not been succesful. 25 states
have held elections in the last two years [2003-2005], and at least 3/4 of the states have held
elections since 1998, when the bylaws were adopted. As far as we could tell the number of SCs
that fall under the grandfather clause is now down to four: FLGW, SDGW, NHGW, and KSGW.
Again, we may be mistaken in this; although some states have posted detailed lists of their past
state coordinators (cf. IAGW, TXGW], most have not and we had to go by "name recognition"
and our rapidly failing memory of who has been around since dirt was new. Although it may have
taken longer than the original framers of the bylaws intended, the issue of grandfathered states
appears to be more or less resolving itself.

A bigger problem might be those states that have adopted and published guidelines for the regular
election of State Coordinators, and then ignored them. We found three examples, but there may
be more. One of them is WYGW, which apparently held its last election for a 2-year SC term in
2000 [that SC recently resigned and the state now has an acting SC. The other ones are MDGW
and DEGW, both of which require SC elections every two years and both of which apparently
held their last elections in 2001. The SC for both of those states is Shari Handley, currently the
National Coordinator of the USGenWeb Project.

SPEAKING OF: You have just two days left to vote. If you haven't done your civic duty yet,
don't forget to do it before July 31, 2005 (11:59 pm) CST.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Throwing the bums out since 1998

posted by merope at 8:25 AM 10 comments   
Friday, July 29, 2005
Burning Down The House
TGIF...its Your Daily Board Show!

GETTING OUT OF DODGE: We'd like to be able to report that the Board is actively discussing
and debating various aspects of Motion 05-12, but we can't do that because NC Shari Handley
has already called a vote on it. And in record time, we might add. She called for the vote about 2
hours shy of the traditional 48 hour discussion window and only about a day after the last
comment was made. Although one Board member asked for an extension of the discussion time
and a couple have pointed out that they felt more discussion of the motion was warranted, Shari
has not responded to either the request or the comments. The vote currently stands at 3 YES
votes and 4 NO votes.

Shari also adjourned the meeting upon the close of the vote tomorrow afternoon. It looks like the
vote was rushed in order to wrap business up before the end of the month. Its also apparent that
only NC-approved motions are allowed the courtesy of an extensive weeks-long discussion
period. [However, it is true that this one issue consumed pretty much the entire month of July; we
can appreciate any desire to have it over and done with before it bleeds into another month. There
is a very real possibility that August will be very busy for the Board.]

TMI: There has been just a wee bit of discussion down in the Letters to the Editor over the last
few days concerning elections for State Coordinator. Apparently there is great concern that SCs
don't hold elections frequently enough and that some of them, once in office, hold no further
elections at all. During the discussion a question arose about which states have held elections,
which states hold regular elections, and which states have never had an election. Project member
Keith Giddeon has compiled a nicely done list of all the current state coordinators in USGenWeb
and when they were elected [if they were elected]. Its posted here:

http://www.giddeon.com/charts/sc-terms.txt

Keith welcomes all comments and corrections; you may send them directly to him at
wilkes@giddeon.com. If anyone wishes to write a brief blurb on how its done in your state [do
you regularly elect your SC? Do you have bylaws/guidelines on how this is supposed to happen?
Have CCs in your state tried to call an election and been rebuffed?], we'll be happy to publish it
here. We are particularly interested to know what states have guidelines in place that provide for a
regular and orderly transition of power. States that we know have guidelines include TNGenWeb,
INGenWeb and IAGenWeb. We believe that ILGenWeb just passed guidelines but we don't find
them online anywhere. We seem to recall seeing guidelines on the OHGenWeb page a short time
ago, but they appear to be no longer linked. GAGenWeb used to have guidelines, but the Board
abolished them in the coup that removed its SC.

We must say though, that we don't understand why some have suddenly seized on state elections
as the panacea for all that ails USGenWeb. Don't get us wrong; we are all for free and open
elections as often as possible. But "electing" SCs is not going to solve the issue of CC
empowerment. After all, any dictator can hold an election, and they often do.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Power to the people since 1998

posted by merope at 7:45 AM 8 comments   
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Down To Business
Swamped...its Your Daily Board Show!

STARTING FROM SCRATCH: Shari Handley declared the hostile amendment to Motion 05-12
failed, with 2 YES votes and 9 NO votes, and re-opened the discussion on Motion 05-12. Angie
Rayfield suggested they start with Larry Flesher's suggestions for amendment, and Bettie Wood
asked that both the original motion and Larry's proposals be reposted.

That's all there is today, folks. Stay cool!

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Oversleeping since 1998

posted by merope at 6:00 AM 0 comments   
Monday, July 25, 2005
When Life Gives You Lemons
Taking the good with the bad...its Your Daily Board Show!

ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING: From the vote counts posted this morning, the hostile
amendment to Motion 05-12 has failed. Per Sturgis a majority is required to pass an amendment,
and thus far the vote stands at 2 YES votes and 9 NO votes.

A CORRECTION, WE THINK: We have received thus far one response to our article yesterday
about who gets the election results first, the EC Chair or the EC mailing list. That response
indicated that the results will go first to the EC mailing list and not to the EC Chair alone as was
reported yesterday. This is a bit of a quandary. Our previous correspondents were as credible as
the recent one, and they say otherwise. The one person who could definitively answer the
question, EC Chair Tina Vickery, has not yet responded to our inquiry.

THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO HARD: This brings up a larger issue. We understand and support
the EC's need to conduct its daily business in secrecy. We've been there and its generally boring
administrative stuff, but they do occasionally need to discuss eligibility issues of voters and
candidates, qualifications of potential EC members, and the like. But what should be utterly
transparent is the EC's operating procedures and the EC's operating procedures actually mandate
this by requiring it to provide on its website:

"A general page about how the election mechanism functions in general (nominations, voting
process, result release) to be replaced at an actual election time with a similar page detailing the
specifics of that election including clickable and written out URLs to where each region voter
goes, where to vote for national level, a listing of states in each region, alternative voting
mechanisms for those who for any reason have a problem using the chosen voting mechanism,
etc."

We can find no such page on the EC's website. Nor can we find a page listing information on past
Advisory Board members, as is also required by the EC's procedures. Although the EC is also
supposed to maintain a page where new members can register or make changes to their
registration that page is currently disabled and we can find no sign of the page where "local
project leadership" can go to make changes to their personnel lists. We cannot find a page
"detailing eligibility guidelines including how and who to contact regarding problems or
questions." Come to think of it, the EC's procedures also require quarterly reports. There aren't
any posted on the EC's website and there are none listed in the Board minutes for all of 2005. The
last 2004 report was posted on 31 December 2004 and there should have been at least two since
that time.

Some of these things are perhaps more important than others, but all of them are required by the
EC's operating procedures and the EC is currently in violation of each of them and has been for
some time.

IN OTHER NEWS: We heard an interesting rumor yesterday. Apparently MyFamily.com, Inc.,
which owns both Ancestry.con and Root$web.com, Inc., has been buying up scads of high school
yearbooks on eBay. In the three weeks or so that their buyer's alias has been an eBay member
they've managed to rack up a most impressive feedback score and have purchased nearly 400 old
yearbooks from all over the country [along with assorted nautical prints]. So expect to see a big
"high school yearbook database" announcement on Ancestry sometime in the near future. It looks
like they are averaging only about $10 apiece for the yearbooks and that's chump change, so with
any luck they'll just fold this into their regular subscription instead of offering it as something you
have to pay extra for.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Keeping hope alive since 1998

posted by merope at 6:15 AM 19 comments   
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Don't Make Me Put On My Heels And Come Down There
Generally speaking...its Your Daily Board Show!

BORED STUFF: The vote on the hostile amendment to 05-12 now stands at 2 YES votes and 5
NO votes.

DESPERATE MEASURES: We have heard through the grapevine that, in a departure from
previous protocol, EC Chair Tina Vickery has requested that Larry Stephens send the election
results directly to her rather than to the EC's mailing list. We are not sure why this would be,
unless Larry is no longer on the EC's mailing list, or Tina for some reason wants to see the results
before anyone else does. A couple of "people in the know" confirmed that the election results
would go directly to Tina, but they didn't know if that was a standard procedure or something
new for these troubled times. We wrote Tina early yesterday and asked her about it, but she has
not yet graced us with a reply.

AREA 51: Over on DISCUSS, the topic of conversation over the last day has continued to be
been openness vs. secrecy. Apparently just wanting the project to have some idea of what is being
done on its behalf and seeing no compelling reason to keep committee disussions sekrit are not
sufficient reasons for opposing a closed mailing list for the GPC. One must also evidently have a
psychiatric illness. Witness the following:

Don Kelly: "I think the word *paranoia* fits in here. I will not...support the paranoid viewpoint. I
totally support a viewpoint that most members will do the right thing for the project...[and] will
not become involved in dark conspiracies, real or imagined. Black helicopters flitting around?
Remember?"

Ellen Pack: "...I totally agree. So...why the paranoia about a closed list?"

This was in response to a fairly reasonable post from Don Tharp that suggested: 1) people who
cannot handle public scrutiny should not be taking public positions; 2) past methods of doing
things have pleased almost no one; 3) the Project has demonstrated a serious inability to learn
from its past mistakes; and 4) with open meetings there can be no whistle blowers. The post
notably lacked any mention of 1) secret trials; 2) using a secret list to abuse the membership; or 3)
any other kind of raving about conspiracies "real or imagined". Apparently the usual suspects have
run out of reasoned arguments and are thus resorting to ad hominem attacks. Cheesy.

We will note that this discussion seems to have wrapped up with another reasonable post, this one
by Mike St. Clair, who said, "I don't think different positions on whether a private list or a public
list is better suited to work such as the GPC will be expected to do necessarily depicts paranoia
on either side. Some folks feel this work will be done better if out from under the microscope;
others feel it will be done better if the membership who care have a blow by blow view of the
procedure development, along with ample opportunity to provide their viewpoint. Both
viewpoints are perfectly reasonable...we have delegated this decision to our elected board, and if
we feel strongly about our position we should let our board know how we feel...But need we
accuse each other of paranoia, bad faith, lack of intellect, etc., in trying to put forward our
positions?"

LIES AND STATISTICS: For those of you claiming that there is overwhelming support for a
secret list, AND for those of you claiming overwhelming support for an open list, here's the
breakdown of posters so far, and where they've posted their wisdom pearls. Note that each poster
is only counted once, regardless of verbosity and where they posted.

PRO OPEN LIST: Teresa Lindquist (usgw-sw), Karen Miller (usgw-sw), Don Tharp (usgw-sw),
Betty Brooks (usgw-sw), Bettie Wood (usgw-sw, board), Angie Rayfield (board, discuss), Jan
Cortez (board), Scott Burow (board), Jeffry Scism (discuss), Connie Burkett (discuss), Larry
Flesher (board), Linda Barton (board)

PRO CLOSED LIST: Linda Davenport (usgw-sw), David Samuelsen (usgw-sw), John Schunk
(usgw-sw), Jo Branch (usgw-sw), Ellen Pack (discuss), Don Kelly (discuss, board), Betsy Mills
(board), Karen de Groote-Johnson (discuss)

This would be 12 members in favor of an open meeting, and 8 in favor of a closed meeting. If one
could consider this a reasonable sample, one could say that 60% of the Project is in favor of an
open meeting. But this is not a reasonable sample. This topic has generated a lot of verbiage, but
its basically coming from a slight handful of people. Several people in the above lists spoke only
once; several others have contributed in heroic measure to the discussion. It's only a hot topic on
three lists; the other three regional lists and the state coordinators' list haven't touched on the
topic at all. We don't know how many people are currently in the project, but we are sure that 20
is a vanishingly small proportion of whatever the number is. So, unless Board members' inboxes
are crammed full of messages with opinions on this topic [and they may well be], we can only
assume that 1) it's impossible to gauge the membership's desire in this matter; and 2) the
membership probably doesn't really care. Those of us who do care really care a lot, but it appears
to be a big yawn for everyone else.

MOUSEKETEERS: It appears we have a little Scott Burow appreciation club going on down in
the comments section. Our loyal readers seem to think we are not giving Scott his props. Well,
here's the deal, loyal readers. Scott has spoken very little in his brief time on the Board, and has
spoken extensively on just one topic. Yes, he is articulate, and yes, the DBS editorial staff does
share his opinion on the current matter of open committees. But who knows what opinions he has
on other issues? It is, after all, not too likely that Shari would let anyone too radical on the Board.
So we'll save our gushing for when he has a track record. We hope he's every bit as fabulous as a
few of you seem to think he is.

OUR READERS WRITHE: Speaking of letters to the editor, some things are beyond even our
legendary tolerance and thus we have removed a message left by an anonymous poster to the
comments section yesterday. In the future, if readers wish to send letters to the editor that
disparage anyone on the basis of their gender, race, ethnicity, religion or lack thereof, national
origin, sexual orientation, medical condition, age, political affiliation, or any other personal
attribute, we will remove the posts unless they are signed. You are certainly welcome to your
antediluvian opinions, but if you are going to share them with the rest of us, be brave and do it
under your own name.

BONUS QUOTE: "...there are no evil conspiracies - but there are would-be whistle blowers who
say there are, and that is what is destructive, and that is exactly what forces closed hearings."
--Ellen Pack, not clear on the concept


-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Had it up to here since 1998

posted by merope at 7:20 AM 7 comments   
Saturday, July 23, 2005
No One Goes There Anymore
The light at the end of the tunnel...its Your Daily Board Show!

PROGRESS: After some discussion of why Shari and Roger all of a sudden, for the first time in
memory, ruled a call of the question out of order [apparently they thought it was rude], Shari
finally called the vote on "Don's" hostile amendment to Motion 05-12. At this writing, voting is
neck and neck, with two YES votes and one NO vote.

CHEAP SEATS: There has been some further discussion of the both the proposed GPC and a
future Grievance Committee over on DISCUSS. Ellen Pack, of course, just reiterated that it was
of no concern to her what method the unwashed used to talk among themselves, but "the
committee must have their own private list." [We looked up "broken record" on wikipedia, but no
link to her photo yet.] The interesting post came from Roger Swafford, who noted, "The issue of
grievances and how they are to be resolved is one of the most important tasks for USGenWeb to
hammer out after all these years...Members who have been wronged want something done ...a
finding of facts and an enforceable ruling...no matter what the committee procedures end up
being, until a standing rule is adopted by the AB to protect the parliamentary rights of members
whom are a party to a grievance no progress will be evident...a GPC is a waste of time, the
bylaws provide for grievance submission to an AB Rep...why not appoint a grievance committee
with instructions to follow the parliamentary authority and get on with it."

Now, we are all for simplicity, and have suggested something along these lines ourselves in recent
memory. Committees do have a tendency to get way more complicated than is necessary and the
Board is no different. In trying to cover all the bases, make sure there is no wiggle room for
malfeasance of any kind, and please many and varied constituencies, procedural rules run the risk
of becoming too complicated and arcane. It is certainly the case that "too many rules" is as ripe
for abuse as "too few rules." But what Roger has proposed is essentially the status quo. The
Board itself has served as a "grievance committee" for the entirety of its history, and we find
ourselves in our current position because it hasn't worked very well. No one is happy with it, and
its roundly perceived as biased, unfair, unreliable, inconsistent, and extremely untimely. We are
not convinced that just appointing a committee of some kind and "getting on with it" will improve
the situation. Even Mike St. Clair has more or less come out in favor of adopting "some standard
time frames for discussing and voting on substantive issues, and for procedural matters."

We think, though, that Roger's suggestion will have a good reception in the Lair of the NC. When
"Don's" hostile amendment fails, discussion will presumably resume on Angie's original motion.
We don't think the hostility toward "Don's" amendment signals any great support for Angie's
version, and we think that the Board will most likely either bog down trying to amend it to
everyone's liking or just kill it outright. Once it fails, Shari will have a free rein to appoint a
committee of her choosing. Skipping the GPC and going right to the GC will be very appealing,
since it will mean she can set how grievances are handled for the forseeable future, rather than the
more iffy influence she would have in just choosing the team that will develop procedures.

DESPERATE TIMES: We know this sounds like some hackneyed and convoluted reasoning, and
it is. But we are given to understand by some concerned project members who apparently witness
these things on regular basis, that some of the members of the ruling class are basically "losing it."
There is, apparently, real fear that certain people might lose their Board seats and that the "right"
people might not end up elected and certain standard ways of doing things might not be
maintained in any new administration. Some little birds tell us that certain highly placed people
[think Board and EC] are beginning to see the value of using their power while they have it to
effect whatever far-reaching changes they can and to protect the cherished status quo.

We also note that this always happens right around this time of year, and all the anguished
howling is possibly just election jitters. After all, the "right" people almost always win, and we
don't think the usual suspects have anything to fear this time either. Although, with the company
some of them keep...

UNHOLY TRINITY: So, we were checking out campaign pages this morning, trying to decide
who to vote for [heh], and came across something kinda funny. Linda Haas Davenport [who
works very hard to channel the kindly grandmother type] has posted some "unsolicited
endorsements" on her page. The upfront ones are from Shari Handley and Jana Black, and that's
no big surprise. However, tucked away behind a link is a third endorsement that probably really
was unsolicited, from none other than Derick "Raving Lunatic" Hartshorn. Now why do you
suppose she hid this one away? Couldn't be the embarrassment factor of association with the name
of a man who once posted a giant picture of a horse's behind on his personal website, could it?

Anyways, we got a good laugh out of it, and these three endorsements pretty much tell us all we
really need to know about Linda Haas Davenport.

BONUS QUOTE: "I have run out of ways to repeat myself..." --Don Kelly

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Getting no respect since 1998

posted by merope at 8:40 AM 7 comments   
Friday, July 22, 2005
I Wanna Be Sedated
Better than a lobotomy...its Your Daily Board Show!

AS THE WORLD TURNS: The Board continues to debate the merits of an open mailing list for
the proposed Grievance Procedures Committee, although it might be more accurate to say that
Angie, Jan, Bettie, and Scott continued to argue for openness and Don Kelly continued to insist
that he will not alter "his" hostile amendment to insure that the committee's activities will be
transparent to the membership. Bettie Wood moved to call the question, but Parliamentarian
Roger Swafford ruled that was an illegal motion [and we note the record speed with which the
NC forwarded that to the Board list].

Don has now switched to the tactic of pretending that if there is not exactly a groundswell of
public opinion in favor of secrecy, there is no obvious majority in favor of openness. He noted,
"...I haven't seen majority support to specify that the list would be open...I see three or four in
favor of mandating the list be open and more than that number seem opposed." Apparently,
however, Don cannot count. Thus far, on the Board alone, Don and Betsy are the only opponents
to any provisions that would require an open list, and Angie, Bettie, Linda, Scott, Larry, and Jan
have spoken definitively in favor of an open list. David and Gail have discussed the amendment,
but have not expressed any discernable opinion on this specific issue. This is a quorum, and since
an amendment requires only a majority to pass, if only these 10 Board members voted, the motion
would fail. Since everyone is citing member input to support their opinions, a quick check of the
public forums indicates no clear consensus. On the chatty SW regional list, the situation is
essentially at a draw, with four members in favor of an open list and four opposed [this doesn't
count either Don or Bettie, who've both participated in the discussions]. The topic hasn't even
been a blip on the radar of the other regional lists. On the DISCUSS list, where one might have
expected an outpouring of support for secrecy, only a few members commented after Ellen
dropped her little cowpie of a suggestion for a sekrit list with some lip-service given to member
participation. One member opposed it, one supported it, and Mike St. Clair provided suggestions
as to how the message board forums could be adapted to suit the needs of whatever the Board
decides to do. We, of course, are not generally privy to the contents of Board members' inboxes
and Don could indeed be receiving massive private support for his position and the others could
be receiving support for theirs.

In any case, it appears that most Board members have figured out where they stand on this issue
and several have said they are ready to vote on the amendment rather than waste further time. The
amendment has been debated, with breaks for challenges, for a little over a week. Angie withdrew
her last challenge 6 days ago and the Board has discussed the motion extensively since that time.
We are not exactly sure why Roger and Shari decided to prevent Bettie from calling the question,
but at this point all anyone has to do is move to end debate and the Board can then proceed to
voting on the amendment itself. There is still hope that they might possibly get to discussing the
logo issue before the election is over.

BTW: There is little more than a week left in the ongoing election. If you haven't voted yet, don't
forget!

PRICELESS QUOTE O' THE DAY: "They are adults, our team mates, and they know our
project goals, and I trust they will accomplish their task without creating more embarresments."
--Don Kelly [emphasis added]

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Clinging to hope since 1998

posted by merope at 6:10 AM 2 comments   
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Troop Manuevers
Playing games...its Your Daily Board Show!

PULLING OUT ALL THE STOPS: Now that the tone of discussion of the GPC has swung
toward at least a modicum of openness, the usual suspects have leapt into action. In Board Land,
Betsy "Butter Wouldn't Melt" Mills suggested that the committee itself be allowed to decide
whether it would operate openly or in secret and suggested that anyone who cares about this
should just, you know, volunteer [as if just anyone has an ice cube's chance in hell of actually
ending up a committee member]. Bettie Wood drily noted "I don't think there's near enough
vacancies to allow that."

RUDE AWAKENING: Even the torporous DISCUSS list has slouched into wakefulness now
that its masters sense danger. Ellen "Betsy's Evil Twin" Pack has suggested that "someone" be
designated to collect and collate comments from the peanut gallery and forward them to the GPC
for their consideration, or that polls be occasionally conducted to gauge the members'
temperament. The committee itself, of course, will meet and deliberate entirely in Sekrit. As it
turns out, this is for no compelling reason other than to protect the delicate constitutions of the
committee members from the attention of certain "mailing lists and blogs that are in existence
solely to ridicule and undermine everything good members try to do." [Eh, she's just mad at us
because we chopped her silly little proposal into bite size bits and had it with fava beans and a nice
chianti.] When someone observed that sekrit meetings are ripe for abuse, she conceded that any
type of alternate show forum would work for her, just as long as the real deliberations went on
behind closed doors. In other words, throw 'em a bone and ignore 'em. While we can appreciate
that it is in fact easier to get stuff done without someone looking over your shoulder, we just don't
think making GPC members' lives simple and pleasant trumps the Project's right to know what is
going on and to participate in it.

[We just incidentally wonder if Shari will threaten Ellen with moderation for either mentioning the
unclean or publicly disparaging fellow members, but we aren't holding our breath.]

Keeping an entire committee under wraps just because that nasty old DBS might write an editorial
or two makes no sense at all, and its insulting to the membership. Does anyone really believe that
if the DBS went away the Board and its minions would suddenly embrace the daylight? We don't
recall that happening during the DBS' long sabbatical. In fact, the Board started behaving rather
like some kind of poorly house-broken puppy during our hiatus. Among other things, they
actually conducted secret trials. As soon as the DBS was poking around and publishing again,
however, their enthusiasm for that sort of thing seemed to dry right up. They might as well realize
some simple things: 1) the DBS will write about them whether they work in secret or not; 2) its a
lot easier to speculate about "evil conspiracy" when everything is cloaked in unnecessary secrecy;
3) there are rather a lot of singing birds out there these days; and 4) the membership, not being
stupid, can tell the difference between times when confidentiality is necessary and times when it's
just a convenience for some people.

If this wasn't so painfully, sadly transparent, it would be humorous. The secrecy thing just isn't
flying this time, even on the Board [bless their hearts], so they've trotted out their cheesy little
arguments over on the one list which they know has been stripped clean of most dissenting voices.
But you know, its odd this time. The whole secrecy deal isn't getting much traction over on
DISCUSS either. Ellen's idea dropped like a belch at a high society soiree, and everyone is mostly
ignoring it and just sort of staring off into the distance with a vaguely embarrassed look on their
faces.

Apparently our Ellen doesn't have much faith in the ability of the committee to do its work unless
its coddled and protected from the scrutiny of the membership. We might could just barely buy
her argument if the outcome would be something the entire membership would vote to accept or
reject, as was the case with both of our bylaws committees. But whatever comes out of the
proposed GPC will be accepted or rejected by the Board, and could be round-filed solely by
inaction of the NC, who is free to bury the report if it doesn't please them. What Ellen is
essentially proposing is a committee hand-picked by the NC, from some sample of volunteers
perhaps known only to her, that will work in secret to devise a set of procedures for the entire
Project that will then be accepted or rejected by the Board [which Ellen will probably be a
member of in a couple of months]. Member input and any consideration of it will be strictly
voluntary, and any attention paid to the cheap seats may or may not be just for show. Leopards
really don't change their spots much, do they?

We've said it before, but it bears repeating. If you don't have anything to hide, well then, there's
really no need to hide, is there?

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Sick and destructive since 1998

posted by merope at 5:30 AM 7 comments   
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Terrible Twos
In the eye of the storm...its Your Daily Board Show!

MORE OF THE SAME: The Board continues to discuss "Don's" hostile amendment of Motion
05-12. The discussion has reached the stage both where participants are rehashing their arguments
ad infinitum and where members are starting to make wild predictions of dire consequences if one
course of action is followed instead of another. Gail Meyer Kilgore, for instance, is warning of the
chaos and gridlock that will ensue if "over 2,000 members in this project" were allowed to
subscribe and post to the proposed GPC mailing list. Don continues to spout incoherent platitudes
about his own motion and the benelovence of the Board and all its works. The remaining
discussants continue to remind Don that the history of the Board is not entirely one of openness
and free exchange of ideas. Several Board members are encouraging their colleagues to vote
against the amendment so that discussion on the main motion can ensue and consensus be reached
before another amendment is proposed. At least one Board member is encouraging Don to
withdraw the amendment and "work with the maker of the original motion & come to a
compromise."

I HAVE NO MOUTH BUT I MUST SCREAM: The discussion of 5-12a had one tiny
encouraging development. Although he has vigorously opposed altering his amendment to specify
that the committee's mailing list be open to non-committee members, during recent discussion
Don suggested that he might be willing to include wording specifying that the mailing list would
be "open." He has received strong encouragement in this by several Board members, including
Bettie Wood, Scott Burow, and Larry Flesher. He actually hasn't moved to amend the amendment
yet, but he may yet do so.

The idea of an "open" list has been bandied about in other places, and there are essentially three
positions. Some suggest that the proposed GPC should operate in complete or near-complete
secrecy, much like the Bylaws Revisions Committee which involved the membership in its
discussions only after it had reached irrevocable consensus on the wording of an amendment.
Although some have suggested the BRC as an example of an effective secret committee, we think
most members understand what a profound disaster that approach proved to be. Other
committees have, however, worked using this approach and its not without some appeal, but the
voices in favor of it are few. The second opinion is that the GPC list should be both archived and
open for read-only subscription to all project members. The committee could carry out its work
openly without the distraction of non-member comment on the list itself, although any member
would be free to send suggestions to the GPC. This option was tried with the late Grievance
Committee working group, and seems to have been workable. The third option is to allow all
members to subscribe to the GPC list in full read and post mode. This has not, to our knowledge,
been tried before, although a few people are claiming their positive experiences with various
flavors of closed committees as evidence that an open one just can't work. Unfortunately, there
are certain realities in USGenWeb that might preclude a truly open list. Many of our members, for
instance, are so disenchanted by their experiences in the project that they will not accept anything
done by any Board member or loyal opponent at face value and often leap to public attack with
very little encouragement. Some of us just can't resist the cheap shot or the allusion to some
conspiracy or other. Many, many politically active project members just simply assume the worst
of those that disagree with them and behave accordingly. An open list would therefore probably
have to be heavily moderated and that would, of course, lead to accusations of unfairness,
favoritism, and censorship. It might be an interesting experiment, but it may not be worth it.

We are going for Door #2 on this one. Having the GPC list open to read-only subscription is
probably a radical enough leap for USGenWeb for now. Yeah, its a weenie compromise
[regardless of whether you are pro-secrecy or pro-openness] but it's also a safe middle point
between complete secrecy and the potential chaos of total participation. The discussion will be
transparent and anyone who is interested can follow along. With any luck the committee will
include a broad enough variety of viewpoints that list subscribers will feel comfortable sending
their comments to one or more of the committee members. That, of course, will be up to whoever
gets to pick the committee members. We are not sure how optimistic to be about our chances
there, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

BONUS QUOTE: "If anyone gets out of line...becomes too dictatorial, the other members of the
AB WILL get in their face...You may depend upon that prediction...and take it to the bank as
gold." --Don Kelly

DOUBLE BONUS QUOTE: "Saying this respectfully & unsarcastically, it does seem the trend is
to moderate those that go against the flow, or consensus of some." --Bettie Wood

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Carrying coal to Newcastle since 1998

posted by merope at 6:20 AM 5 comments   
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Tripping The Light Fantastic
Heading them off at the pass...its Your Daily Board Show!

TANGLED WEB: Since last we wrote, two basic threads of conversation have progressed in
Board Land. The first addressed "Don's" amendment. After Shari threatened to call a vote last
night if there was no further discussion on the amendment, the Board members suddenly found
they had quite a bit to say about it. Summarized comments follow:

"Doesn't this motion bother anyone?? The motion turns the whole kit & kaboodle over to just one
person...The NC can...pick & choose who they want on the committe. Will that be from a circle
of their friends? Insuring the result the NC wants, whatever that might be? Will it probably be
done is "secret", since the list will also be under the control of the NC? & this motion doesn't
clarify anything about this list except that there will be one?...Keeping our members out of the
loop again until all is said & done?" --Bettie

"The NC always had this prerogative and I trust that everyone on this board will continue to do
the right thing...If anything bothers me at all, it is the suggestion that some members of this board
are not trusted to put the membership at large first. I do object to that implication." --Don

"I am concerned and so are several members who I have spoken to. The potential to limit the
input from the membership to a restricted few, and to limit their knowledge of what is being
discussed by possibly closing the list flies in the face of open communication...Without a
guarantee of an open list and open membership...and without the ability of the membership to
have oversight...I gravely doubt that there will be a set of procedures outlined that will be
workable and acceptable to the whole...having the potential of a rubberstamp committee working
in secret is not in the interest of the project." --Scott

"...I think this amendment should be defeated in favor of another amendment that will open up the
procedures committee to everybody that wants to subscribe AND to post...And I do believe the
Chair of the final committee should make the appointments to the committee, not the NC."
--David

"The amendment by substitution does away with a committee and it's previous work and time to
form a whole new committee of the NC's choosing. It allows a smaller committee to be picked by
one person and to operate totally in private where no one, including the AB will know how it is
progressing with it's task nor will the membership be able to offer suggestions. I do not see this as
a step forward." --Linda

"For eight years the NC has set committees. The committee chair traditionally has a say in
recruiting volunteers, and how a committee mailing list is used....What I understand is the day to
day business duties of the NC...Can someone tell me why all P&P, traditions, rules, guidelines and
bylaws must be restated and reiterated as part of every single amendment? Isn't anything assumed
from past actions anymore?...I don't understand what all the hoopla is about. It seems so simple to
accomplish...be proactive, goal oriented, cooperate and get the task done...Why must we have to
pull teeth to get even the simplest and straight forward business done?" --Don

"While traditionally the NC may have appointed members to some committees, I find no
requirement for that...the reason we are at this point is because we are trying to open the project
up and try to get more participation from members. It was obvious when the original GPC was
formed that there was interest from project members in voicing their opinions on a fair grievance
procedure. I do not believe that this motion amendment by substitution guarantees them that
voice." --Linda

"Your amendment creates a situation where the potential for Linda's prediction could come to
pass; i.e., a hand-picked committee operating in secret to develop a procedure that may impact
any number of members of this project, and without any input from the very members that it will
effect. I don't know if that is the intent of your motion, but if approved, it could very well be
handled that way whether you intended it or not...By supporting and passing an amendment that
could take the entire development of any Grievance Procedures into the closet, we...give the
appearance impropriety - intended or not. At worst, we open the door for impropriety, innocently
or otherwise...I want 'straight forward business' done, and straight forward business doesn't
include opening the door for committees operating in secret developing a formal Grievance
Procedure without the membership of this Project having a voice in that work...If you expand
your amendment to ensure that the membership has a voice in that procedure by open lists and an
opportunity be part of the committee, folks would be more supportive..." --Scott

"I trust this committee to do the right thing in every case. Most...desire and solicit greater
participation from project members. Nothing else would make any sense at all, and there is always
the vote that can stop anything from going awry. Trust your instincts on this one...In closing, take
a little test. Put two AB members on a committee with five non AB members, put them on a
mailing list, then guess how much work could be done in secrecy. I see nothing to worry about..."
--Don

While its hard to guess what the silent majority on the Board thinks of this hostile amendment
[only a handful have made public comment], it does not appear that there is much support for it.
Don seems utterly unaware of the history of committees in the Project, whether or not they
contain non-Board members. Other than the recent doomed GPC, we can't recall any Board
committee that has operated publicly or without a gag rule. The ESC operated that way, as did
the guidelines and bylaws committees in all their iterations. The EC most definitely operates that
way. In fact, usually the gag rule is treated as some sort of Prime Directive and an inordinate
amount of effort is put into threatening, finding, and punishing leakers. The hope that an NC will
bend over backwards to include diverse voices on any committee is also not borne out by history
and experience. The only NC we can recall that ever tried to include a broad variety of members
on committees was Holly Timm. This is one of the reasons that the ESC insisted that the EC pick
its own members and the Board merely approves a slate. Sometimes it's just really important that
the process be free of entanglements, conflict of interest, the appearance of bias, a pre-ordained
agenda, and any other negative connotations you can come up with when one single person is
empowered to choose committee members. Theoretically at least whatever the GPC ends up
doing can affect every single project member, and there is no reason to deny them a voice in its
workings.

Whatever Don thinks the intentions are behind the amendment he forwarded to the Board, the
history of the Project does not lend itself to optimism in this area. Thankfully other Board
members appear to have a better grasp of USGenWeb history and tradition than he does.

MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS: The second thread concerned just who gets to post directly to
Board-L and who has to first pass through Shari's filter. Bettie commented that while she had no
objection to the EC Chair posting directly to the list, Sturgis also gives Roger Swafford the right
to do the same as "an advisory or consultant member." She also noted "So your saying that we
can wait a couple of hours on Roger's parlimentary rulings, but the EC cannot wait a couple of
hours too?...it was stated that this list has less than 100 subscribers. The EC has mulitple lists to
post on...While Roger's rulings may not necessarily time sensitive, it has held up board actions by
not allowing him direct access to the Board list..."one" could hold on to his postings until it suits
them...I think it sets a bad precedent..." [My, doesn't that sound familiar?] EC Chair Tina Vickery
then publicly asked Shari to switch her to read-only mode on Board-L, noting "There is no reason
for Election Committee Project-wide notices to be sent to the USGenWeb Project Advisory
Board by the Election Committee Chairperson...I have appreciated the subscription to
Board-L...But the divisiveness that it has provoked among the Board and Project...does not
justify its presence..." [O, what a saint she is!]

OUT OF ORDER: In the midst of these discussions, Shari threatened Bettie with moderation if
she didn't tone down her rhetoric. After Bettie noted that Don, to whom her comments were
directed, had not found them offensive, Shari backed off a bit, although she did say she found
Bettie's request to have her "disrespectful" comments pointed out to her to be itself "sarcastic."
[We think Shari was far more upset at the suggestion that she was playing favorites among
various Board hangers-on and that there was something under-handed going on than she was at
any playful comments directed at Don. But griping about it would be poor form.]

We've noticed something of a trend lately in discussion on the Board: once it gets started, Shari
starts threatening to moderate people. DISCUSS has grown very quiet these days, and we wonder
if the goal is a silent Board as well.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Talking the talk since 1998

posted by merope at 6:00 AM 5 comments   
Monday, July 18, 2005
Sound And Fury
A tale told by an idiot...its Your Daily Board Show!

STUFF HAPPENS: It appears to have been a busy weekend over in Board Land. The biggest
news is that Angie Rayfield withdrew her motion to appeal Shari's ruling on her request to have
Don's amendment declared out of order. We aren't sure she can technically do that, since the
motion was seconded [by Linda Blum Barton], but no one seems to have picked up on that detail
and Shari has opened the floor for debate on the amendment. This occurred after several Board
members begged Angie to withdraw the challenge so that the Board could proceed to other
business, Don Kelly refused to withdraw his hostile amendment in deference to Angie, and after
Parliamentarian Roger Swafford issued an apparently unrequested ruling that supported Shari's
position and disparaged Angie's version of the motion.

There was surprisingly little discussion of the amendment after all this transpired. Don Kelly did
note that he felt the composition of the proposed committee should be entirely up to the NC and
that openness or secrecy of its deliberations should be up to the committee. David Morgan
pointed out that Roger's pronouncement appeared to support the amendment while declaring the
original motion illegal.

KICKED UPSTAIRS: Bettie Wood also tried to nominate Angie Rayfield for the now-vacant
position of Grievance Coordinator, a position Angie said she would be "honored and pleased" to
accept. Shari, however, declined to allow this nomination to proceed, since she felt it was neither
a pressing matter of business nor prudent to "add this to the mix." Bettie pointed out that Angie
was nominated once before and that nomination was ignored and Shari bluntly informed her that
she will make the next appointment to the position when she is ready to do so. Bettie [somewhat
sarcastically, we gather] thanked Shari "for the teamwork, & the acknowledgment of my
nomination!!" Shari also told Angie she'd certainly be considered for the position "if and when"
Shari gets around to it, but "we have no large backlog of grievances that need 'coordinating', so it
is not a pressing issue." [It would become pressing right quick if someone seconded Bettie's
motion.]

BECAUSE I SAID SO: Bettie also asked why Roger Swafford could not post directly to the
Board list, something which the EC Chair Tina Vickery has of late been allowed to do. Shari
claimed this is "just following precedent," since the Parliamentarian has never been allowed direct
access to the Board list [neither, until recently, has the EC Chair]. When Bettie noted that "It only
seems right that our parlimentarian should be at our disposal & able to post when we ask him a
question," Shari stomped the idea flat. She explained that, "The EC chair has frequent occasion to
post to the membership, and that is why I made the decision to allow her to post directly...since
some of her posts may be time-sensitive, this was my decision...while I am NC, that is how it will
remain...Parliamentary decisions are not time-sensitive..."

AS THE WORLD TURNS: Although in one sense very little occurred over the last day other
than the usual fussiness, some interesting developments actually happened. A new precedent of
hostile amendments has been introduced, which could get really interesting in the future. The
Board pays a lot of lip service to collegiality and team-work, but quite often when the chips are
down their nasty sides come out and some very petty personal differences have been used to
prevent business from proceeding. Although Shari is correct that hostile amendments are
permitted if they are relevant to the original motion and that this particular amendment itself is
indeed germane, it is also true [as Angie has noted] that it has been exceedingly rare that
amendments are introduced and pursued over the objections of the author and second of the
original amendment. Don's refusal to withdraw "his" amendment in the face of Angie's strenuous
objections essentially has lowered the bar to further use of hostile amendments to either push an
agenda or to simple delay or prevent further progress on business before the Board, and we
expect to see increased use of the tactic in the future.

In another interesting development, it appears that personal friends of the NC who are not elected
Board members will have full posting rights to the Board's mailing list at the NC's discretion. This
is something we don't recall ever happening since the days years ago when the Board decided that
Root$web's owners should be "honorary" Board members. While allowing the EC Chair access to
the floor whenever she wants it is probably harmless, the timeliness argument is transparently silly.
Not only have we never seen a pronouncement from the EC that couldn't wait another couple of
hours for someone to come home from work and post it, the EC has multiple forums available to
it, including its own direct mailing list of registered voters. Fewer than a hundred people subscribe
to Board-L and its not exactly the best way to reach the masses in a timely fashion. Roger's
rulings, on the other hand, while perhaps not technically time-sensitive, have been used as a
excuse to hold up Board proceedings in the recent past, and by not allowing him direct
communication with the Board the NC can continue to withhold them as a delaying tactic
whenever it suits her to do so. This is on a par with the continued delay in recognizing motions
and nominations that aren't on her agenda until something more to her liking comes along. While
Shari will be in office only a few more weeks, her successors will likely very much appreciate the
latitude the outgoing Grand Poobah has left behind her.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Gumming up the works since 1998

posted by merope at 7:15 AM 12 comments   
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Train Wreck
Like moths to a flame...its Your Daily Board Show!

TEMPER TANTRUM: "Don's" attempt to amend Motion 05-12 and Shari's various rulings
against the opposition, has had the following results. Angie again "respectfully" challenged the
ruling of the chair, noting "...this is nothing more than another back-door attempt by the chair to
her own "suggested" motion...while stifling any discussion of alternatives to her view...I wasn't
aware that this project has a hallowed tradition of permitting the NC to dictate every detail of
business according to his/her own wishes...The AB has long shown the courtesy of deferring to
the maker of a motion when amendments were discussed. I don't recall *ever* seeing an AB
member proposing a supposed "amendment"...over the protest of the maker of the original motion
as is being done now, apparently with the blessing of the NC."

Shari then tried to deny Angie's challenge and instructed her to "...cease and desist casting
aspersions on the chair, and cease and desist the disrespectful, sarcastic tone, or you will be
moderated." Shari also claimed that she did not have anything to do with "Don's" amendment, and
noted "The proposed amendment is...a PROPOSED amendment....there will have to be a vote in
which the amendment is approved, and then the motion, as amended, will need to be approved. If
the amendment does not get approved, discussion will resume on the motion as originally
proposed."

After Angie reminded Shari that Chairs may not rule on challenges to their rulings, Shari posted
the following: "...it is obvious that the amendment proposed is germane to the original motion. I
urge each AB member to read the relevant sections of Sturgis regarding amendments...The
examples given by Sturgis for amendments that are different but germane to the original motion
are...similar to this situation, so it is very clear that the amendment as presented by Don is in
order...What you seem to be arguing...is that, since you don't LIKE the proposed amendment, it
should be called out of order...that's not how it works. The amendment, as germane to the original
motion, must be permitted to come to a vote of the assembly...I acknowledge your motion to
appeal from the ruling of the chair. The motion requires a second to go any further."

And that's where it stands. Angie will be muzzled if she pursues her theory that "Don's"
amendment is "Shari's" motion. [We must say that although we don't believe for a minute Don
wrote the amendment, it actually bears little resemblance to the motion that Shari put forth
through Betsy.] The appeal from the ruling of the chair does require a second, does suspend
discussion of other business until it is resolved, and is debatable, so we presume that the Board
must now wait some lenght of time until someone either decides to second it or to close debate.
So, there's a few more days down the drain. We are beginning to think that the discussion of
grievances and what to do about them will shortly be going the way of the privacy discussion and
the data repository discussion. Given what we've seen so far, this might not be the worst possible
outcome.

BONUS QUOTE: "...rest assured I would not have proposed a better way if the proposal were
not Sturgis Kosher and very dooable. --Don "Dooable" Kelly

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Ringing the doorbell and running since 1998

posted by merope at 6:45 AM 4 comments   
Friday, July 15, 2005
Poetry in Motion
Where the rubber hits the road...its Your Daily Board Show!

DANCE OF THE PUPPETS: Although the topic is now several months old, the Board
apparently has hot air to spare on the topic of forming a grievance committee. There was first a
great deal more discussion of Motion 05-12, including a suggested rewrite by Larry Flesher that
would have specified the number of Board slots on the proposed GPC and how vacancies were
filled, and a great deal of explication by Angie as to the meaning of various portions of her
motion. Betsy Mills pointed out that "If you have to explain how it is going to work...the motion
is not clear and needs to be amended," and also that "A motion forming a committee should never
name names...It must be amended to remove the names." Don Kelly boldly laid the real issue on
the table when he noted the inherent problem with a majority non-Board committee: "A polarized
5 to 2 vote against every proposal, if control is important."

In a sudden burst of inexplicable [or suspicious, take your pick] eloquence, Don moved to amend
the motion to read: "I move that the current Grievance Procedure Committee be officially
dismissed with thanks. The National Coordinator shall form a new Grievance Procedure
Committee to be composed of seven volunteers, two (2) from the Advisory Board and five (5)
from the general membership. Replacements for vacancies on this committee will maintain 5-2
balance and a mailing list will be provided."

Betsy seconded the motion. [For someone who only a few days ago was righteously proclaiming
that she wasn't interested in power politics, Betsy seems to be taking an unseemly amount of
pleasure in thwarting Angie and her efforts to establish a grievance committee.] Shari opened the
floor to discussion and took pains to note that no further discussion of the main motion was
permitted. Angie tenaciously [or stubbornly, take your pick] defended her motion, and
immediately protested that Don's amendment was not an amendment at all but an entirely new
motion. When Shari shot that objection down, Angie rose to a formal point of order:

"While it is technically within procedure to "amend" a motion to the point that it bears no
resemblance to the original motion, all amendments must be germane. A motion that includes
abolishing an existing committee is so far removed from a motion to add members to that
committee that it is no longer germane to the original motion, and
thus is out of order...If you wish to change the motion completely, then vote against it. What
purpose would this theoretical "amendment" serve other than to remove the committee members
already serving?...Why are there AB members that seem to have no other purpose than to ditch
the committee, and it's work so far, and start over from scratch?"

Shari, of course, smacked this one down hard and fast, noting "The amendment...is an amendment
by substitution...The subject of the original motion was a committee to form grievance
procedures. The amendment is germane to the formation of these
procedures by committee...the point is "not well taken" and discussion of the amendment may
continue."

So there you have it. "Don's" [and we mean that ironically] amendment manages to accomplish
quite a number of things in few words. It gets rid of the current committee and all its members,
most notably Angie Rayfield. The work done by that committee, such as it was, is also tossed by
the wayside. Citing "hallowed tradition", it leaves the formation of the proposed committee firmly
in the hands of the National Coordinator who, as an ex-officio member of the committee, will get
a vote on the GPC. While this will still leave a 5 to 3 non-Board majority, the NC will have
complete control over the membership of the committee and can pick whoever she chooses to sit
on it. We would venture a guess that Shari received just exactly five suitable non-Board
candidates when last she made her call for volunteers. [She has still refused to provide any
information whatsoever as to who responded, either publicly or privately.] There is no
information on how the chair of the committee will be selected. And perhaps most importantly,
with all the wrangling over amendments and points of order, no one seems to have noticed the
biggest change in Don's proposed amendment, which is that the committee mailing list has gone
from being an open list with public subscription and archives, to being just a list provided by
someone [most likely the NC, but that is not specified]. There is no longer a provision for member
participation and the committee will be allowed, and probably encouraged, to work entirely in
secret. We somehow doubt this is an oversight on "Don's" part.

It is becoming increasingly unlikely that Shari will have the final report of the procedures
committee on her desk in time to get it passed by the Board and new grievance procedures in
place before she hands the reins over to Linda Davenport [oops, we mean whoever wins the
impartial election run by Shari and Linda's friends on the EC]. Unless of course, the grievance
committee procedures are already written and they are just awaiting the right committee to
rubber-stamp them. They could get away with that on a sekrit list stacked with the usual suspects,
but not on a public one. Its an intriguing speculation, but we think it more likely that Shari...oops,
we mean Don...is just providing for a friendly, controllable, sekrit committee to pass on to the
next NC.

MOVING ON UP: We've received word that Board member Denise Woodside is the new State
Coordinator of NCGenWeb. This was another election run without the "help" of the EC, and it
seems to have gone off smashingly well. Denise's Board tenure ends this summer and she did not
stand for reelection, so its nice to know she has a cushy retirement in store.

JUNE SCORECARD: Yeah, yeah, we are a little late with this. But that's in the finest tradition of
the Board, so no worries. Let's see how they did with the June agenda.

1. Call to Order [done, June 1]
2. Vote on Motion 05-09 [done, vote began June 1, motion ruled out of order June 2]
3. Reading, Correction, Approval, or Disposition of Minutes [done June 2]
4. Grievance Procedures Committee Report - Angie Rayfield [done June June 6]
5. Appointment of NE/NC SC Rep Replacement [done June 5; the lucky winner was Scott
Burow]
6. New Business [Motion 05-10 to disband the GPC and establish a GC: failed; public discussion
of personnel issues and candidate eligibility; Motion 05-11 to establish June 30 as the candidate
eligibility date: passed; call for volunteers for Grievance Procedures Drafting Committee]
a. Evaluation of Special Projects [not done]
b. State web sites checkup [not done]
c. EC Procedure Change? - Eligibility Verification [not done]
7. Announcements [resignation of DISCUSS list administrator; self-appointment of Shari as new
DISCUSS list administrator; Family History Month information]
8. Adjournment [done, June 29]

All in all, June was a busy month for the team. Grievance committee and election issues consumed
much of their time, but they did manage to complete most items on their agenda along with
several items of new business. Two of the items they did not get to in June were carried over from
previous months. The EC Procedure change item has carried over from at least February, and the
Special Projects item first appeared on the agenda way back in December 2004. The Board
continued to address grievance committee related issues throughout the first half of July, and does
not appear at this point overly likely to get through many of the other July agenda items.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Making silk purses out of sows' ears since 1998

posted by merope at 8:10 AM 1 comments   
Thursday, July 14, 2005
A Few Loose Screws
Better than nothing...its Your Daily Board Show!

POETRY SLAM: Motion 05-12 (Angie's GPC Motion) [yes, that is apparently the official name]
finally gets its day in the sun over on the Board list. First out of the gate after Shari numbered the
motion and opened the floor was Don Kelly. Don wants to "get it down and get it right," and asks
three questions: "1.Does volunteers mean any volunteer except the NC, reguardless of their
temporary title? 2. Will the whol;e committee be paired two to a team so several grievances can
be handles at once? If not, then it appears that twn people is way too many. 3. Will sensitive
matters be discussed on this public archived mailing list?" He also suggested making the motion
[which he apparently has not actually read] "shorter and clearer." Linda Blum Barton reminded
Don that the current motion is just a motion to establish a committee that will work toward
establishing another committee, and that the list therefore will not be used to discuss grievances or
other Sooper Sekrit stuff.

Gail also wondered about the status of Board members on the committee, once they are no longer
Board members. She asked, "How will this effect AB members after elections when we know
some AB members are on this committee and may no longer be apart of the AB come Sept." Don
again asked, "If the committee is populated by five AB members and five at large volunteers,
shouldn't this motion make it clear that five members of the AB will at all times be on the
committee? If AB members do not replace AB members, the committee could end up with ten at
large volunteers, and no AB members. This is a sub-committee of the AB, so don't leave this door
open to chance?"

Don seems not to understand that this is essentially an ad hoc committee, and as such will disband
once it has patched together grievance procedures. With any luck, the committee will have a short
and fruitful life and then go away, so concerns about staffing ratios over the long haul are
misplaced. Not that attrition won't be a logistics problem. The GPC will likely lose more Board
members to attrition once it starts up [Betsy has already quit, Don and Denise do not seem overly
excited about it, Bettie's status is not clear to us, and Jan is due for another storming off in a huff],
and it appears that the first order of business for the committee might be filling vacancies. The
motion does not specify how replacement members for the committee will be chosen, so sitting
Board members, who are themselves project volunteers, are not precluded from volunteering for
open seats. The motion does not require Board members to leave the committee when they leave
the Board. The motion does not set up five "Board seats" and five "Not Board seats," so once
there is a vacancy theoretically anyone who is a project volunteer can fill any seat, regardless of
who left it. We would be far more concerned that the Board will use the wording to fill all the
vacant seats with Board members, but since they have paid lip service to the notion of having
non-Board members work up the grievance procedures, we'll see how that pans out. In any case,
there is no requirement in Sturgis or the bylaws that subcommittees contain any more Board
members than the NC, who under our bylaws serves as an ex officio member of all committees.

We perhaps should not put so much emphasis on Don's meanderings, but he does seem capable of
diverting meaningful discussion with his meaningless non sequiters and hallucinatory statements,
and it might be a useful public service if someone would tell him to RTFM before he opens his
mouth.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
The lesser of two evils since 1998

posted by merope at 6:10 AM 0 comments   
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
By The Pricking of My Thumbs
Just coincidentally...its Your Daily Board Show!

POWER PLAY: The grievance procedures committee discussion creaks along. Yesterday, Angie
Rayfield restated her motion. She originally changed the wording slightly to respect Betsy Mill's
recent resignation from the committee, but re-restated it after Besty used a point of order to note
"The motion must be restated exactly as it was when it was ruled out of order."

Some minor discussion of the motion took place, although Shari has not numbered it or opened
the floor. Bettie wonder what will happen when Denise Woodside and Don Kelly are no longer on
the Board, or when Don Kelly moves up to NC. Angie responded: "Incidentally...If a position
becomes vacant, the vacant position will be filled by a non-AB member, but the wording of the
motion does not require any board member to resign from the GPC if/when their term of office
ends." Good ole Don, who hasn't been too poetical of late, noted "There will need to be a
resignation of course, but the way vacancies on the AB are handled now should work without
alteration." [No, we aren't sure what he means. He seems to be implying that someone would
have to resign from the Board.]

PILING ON: Larry Flesher voted late, but also voted to overturn Shari's ruling, putting the full
vote count at 12 for overturning.

CONVALESCING: Denise Woodside posted a brief message letting the Board know why she's
been away so long. It sounds like she's been through a rough patch and the DBS wishes her a
speedy recovery.

JUST THE NEATEST DAMN THING: Someone sent us something kinda cool yesterday. One
of the OHGW CCs has done some magic or something [yes, we are technically challenged] with
the new Google maps service and used it to mark all the cemeteries in his county and display them
on his county page. I can't even begin to explain this, so here are his words:

"I'm not sure if any of you are aware but Google has added mapping to their search site. There
have been many people hacking the system because it has allowed people to use the mapping API
from Google in conjunction with local databases and come up with unique maps geared to s
specific users imagination...My idea was to use this to update my cemetery page with a map
giving the location of a cemetery and it's information such as township, section, address etc. A
URL can also be added for driving directions or to go to a transcription of the cemetery. Clicking
on a cemetery will move the map to that location and pop up an information balloon...I just got a
page to work for all the cemeteries in Muskingum which runs around 160 or so...The page is
currently working with Firefox/Netscape but may not in IE."

If you want to check this out, the website is at:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohmuskin/cemmap.html

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Easily distracted by shiny things since 1998

posted by merope at 5:45 AM 5 comments   
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Following On
Snap, crackle, pop...its Your Daily Board Show!

BACK TO THE BEGINNING: Shari's ruling that Angie's motion was out of order has been
overturned. Final vote count for overturning: 11. Final vote count for upholding: 0. Shari asked
Angie to restate her motion.

PICKING NITS: Shari's "New Member Survival Guide" has met with the usual accolades over on
DISCUSS and the usual pans over on the alternate CC list. A couple of people have objected to
the overall flippant and unprofessional tone of the document, the implication that learning about
the project one is about to join is some kind of harsh burden, the apparent attitude that new
volunteers are barely old enough to learn how to tie their own shoes, and the portrayal of the
Board members as a bunch of sodden drunks [well, it would explain a lot]. But in general, the
document does not seem to have stirred much interest, although it has made its way to a few state
and regional lists.

The document has brought some problems to light. Richard Howland, who was fired weeks and
weeks ago, is still listed on the home page as the NE/NC SC rep and Scott Burow is nowhere to
be found. The Project apparently also has two sets of Election Committee guidelines which are
quite different from each other. One set, probably the current one, is posted on the EC's website,
and the other is posted on the "Business Procedures" page. The discrepancy between the two
explains our confusion yesterday over the mysterious project-wide mailing list. Apparently,
sometime in the past, the Board amended the EC's operating procedures to allow it to use the
EC's mailing list for whatever purposes it deems appropriate. So, the so-called project-wide
mailing list [we are not on it] is one and the same as the EC's once-sacred mailing list. The EC
reportedly does not actually provide the list to the Board or anyone else, but instead has gone
outside its approved duties to serve as a forwarding service for whatever the Board decides to
send.

What we find most interesting is that this fabulous new document with all this wonderful and
useful information is nowhere linked to from the national website. We'd figure it would at least
get tucked into some backwater link on the Volunteer information site, but its not there. Nor does
it get a prominent link on the home page, where the most people are likely to see it. What's the
point of writing something if you hide it?

All the searching around has also pointed out how poorly and unevenly organized our home page
really is. There are double sets of guidelines, important procedural information is hidden away,
information is out of date or inaccurate, and there are the oddest arcane pages added in, as if
someone decided, "hey, we need something on this!" and then just snagged the first thing off the
web they could find. Did you know that our "Information for Researchers" page nowhere tells
researchers how to use USGenWeb itself?

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Over the top since 1998

posted by merope at 5:50 AM 0 comments   
Monday, July 11, 2005
Problem Child
Postponing the inevitable...its Your Daily Board Show!

LATENT INSURGENCY: The Board has pretty definitively spoken its opinion in the matter of
Shari's recent decision that Angie's motion regarding the grievance procedures committee was out
of order. As of this morning 10 of them had voted to overturn Shari's ruling; none has thus far
voted to uphold it. Shari's ruling has thus been overturned and we can expect to see the motion
numbered, opened for discussion, and voted on sometime in the near future.

We doubt that this signals any real interest in or support for Angie's motion. Its more likely that
the individual Board members just don't like the NC ruling one motion out of order in order to
flog her own preferred approach to an issue. The Board appears even less interested in Shari's...er,
Betsy's version, which has not received a second and is thus effectively dead.

INDOCTRINATION: Shari has published, with minimal fanfare, her "New Member's Survival
Guide." While it treats the important basics of USGenWeb, particularly the bylaws, procedures,
and guidelines, in a rather cavalier fashion and is generally just goofy in its attempts to be funny
and hip [its like watching your parents dressing in baggy pants and trying to be ghetto], it does
concisely summarize basic information about the organization of the project and includes many
generally useful links. And its mercifully brief. Unfortunately, we do not find "DBS" in the list of
useful abbreviations. We are sure this is just an oversight.

The NMSG is here: http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/newvolunteer.shtml

There is one little tidbit of information that we were curious about. In the part on communication,
Shari makes the statement "We maintain a complete national membership list of members' email
addresses, which is used to distribute the monthly USGenWeb Newsletter and for occasional
announcements about elections or other vital information." Now, to the best of our recollection
the only official part of USGenWeb that maintains any sort of complete national list of email
addresses is the Election Committee and their list is not supposed to be used for any purpose
other than distributing information on elections. Its certainly not supposed to be used for
delivering a newsletter or whatever else the powers that be consider "vital." So we are curious as
to whether the National Coordinator and/or the Board is misusing the EC's mailing list, or if
someone else is separately maintaining a "complete national membership list" for whatever
purpose. If so, we wonder who that person might be and how they get their information. Last we
checked, the SCs are not required to inform anyone of new volunteers and the EC is not supposed
to provide its list to anyone for any reason.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor and Publisher, Daily Board Show
Just being difficult since 1998

posted by merope at 6:05 AM 3 comments   
Sunday, July 10, 2005
And Then All Hell Breaks Loose
Specializing in sensationalism...its Your Daily Board Show!

TIT FOR TAT: Well, we take a day off and come back, and the stuff is really flying over in
Board-Land. Angie continued to press her case that Shari's uneven handling of the issue is
inappropriate, Shari continued to ignore Angie's repeated requests for documentation of her "out
of order" ruling and various other pronouncements on the issue, and parliamentarian Roger
Swafford did a drive-by ruling that supported Shari's take on the current grievance procedures
committee squabble [no big surprise there].

Angie and Bettie both asked to know how many members actually volunteered to serve on the
committee and Angie noted, "...none of the AB has been informed of anything having to do with
these volunteers -- not who, when, how many people, nothing." Shari has thus far refuse to
provide this information publicly. [Must be a Sooper Sekrit!]

Betsy Mills then huffed a bit at Angie and resigned both from any Grievance Committee on which
she might currently be serving and as Grievance Coordinator, noting "...it seems there is no hope
for ever solving this problem. It has just become another argument over power and control and I
want no part of it." [Heh. There has really been a lot of stalking off in a huff lately.] The door had
barely hit Betsy's heinie on her way out before Bettie nominated Angie to be Grievance
Coordinator.

Angie next lodged a formal protest against Shari's ruling and called for a Board vote. Shari
opened the voting on whether to overturn or uphold her ruling and thus far one Board member
has voted to overturn it.

PERPETUAL MOTION: We honestly have to wonder if grievances are really worth all this hot
air and directionless activity. At this point, after months of hullabaloo, we are apparently no closer
to having a working grievance procedure than we were back in March when Shari initially tried to
form a committee, and have arguably taken several steps backwards.

While it is appalling that grievances go months before they are addressed, if they are addressed at
all, it does seem that the Board has of late been putting more effort into forming a committee to
form committee than they have been putting into the grievances themselves. According to recent
traffic between the erstwhile Grievance Coordinator, the Board, and various interested parties, the
Board has been sitting on all of four grievances for as long as six months, and only recently
managed to assign mediators to these grievances. [The number of grievances is debatable; we've
heard from a few people that they have had grievances before the Board for awhile and they
apparently were not among the Lucky Four that got mediators. We've also heard through the
grapevine that the Board has received another grievance, from outside the Project, regarding an
alleged copyright violation. And no, the Archives isn't the culprit in this one.]

We don't envy the Board's position in this situation, since at the heart of the matter, they have no
real power to handle grievances, and are likely to find themselves at the receiving end of a lot of
unhappiness no matter what they do. In most cases, grievances are filed by CCs against SCs [SCs
with grievances against CCs merely fire them and solve the problem], and the Board as a rule has
been very reluctant to intervene in state issues, regardless of whatever it is the SC has done. [The
few exceptions to this have tended to involve SCs that the Board members have personal issues
with.] Shari has gone so far as to instruct mediators that no part of their findings will be to
instruct SCs in how to manage their state rosters, which both demonstrates her lack of
understanding as to what mediation really is, and ties the hands of the mediators. Even if the
Board were willing to lay some smackdown on a misbehaving SC, the only real sanction they have
is the Georgia Solution, and that is an exceedingly drastic approach for most of the issues that end
up as grievances [not to mention illegal under our bylaws]. The Board has even less leeway when
the grievances involve the Archives. The management of the Archives considers itself to be above
the bylaws and outside the standard operating procedures of the rest of the Project and would not
likely heed any directive from the Board to resolve a grievance. Most grievances involving the
Archives involve some accusation of copyright violation, and copyright is a very sticky issue.
We've heard from a few insiders over the years that the Board doesn't want to touch that gooey
mess with any length pole and that the usual method of dealing with grievances involving
copyright is just to disappear them or to apply some convoluted logic involving incantion of the
phrase "public domain works can't be copyrighted."

The biggest issue is simply that most grievances can't be resolved. With CC vs. SC grievances the
SC has no incentive to compromise and the Board no power to force a resolution on them. This
leads to the practical solution of repeatedly finding for the SC, which in turn leads to the strong
belief that CCs can't win before the Board. In copyright issues, the Board repeatedly defers the
issue to the Archives because, really, what else can it do? If it says "yes, the Archives is
improperly displaying someone's work without their permission," and the Archives comes back
with "nyah, nyah, nyah," the Board just ends up looking impotent and silly. So again, the tendency
in these cases is either to not decide at all, or to decide in favor of the Archives, leading to the
inevitable and widespread observation that the Board is the Archives' very own personal lapdog.
Should they suddenly develop a spine, find against an SC or the Archives, but then do nothing to
enforce it, they are accused of not "doing something." But if they "do something", they are then
accused of overstepping their bounds, violating the bylaws, and removing the tags off their new
pillows, among other perfidies.

So, what's a Board to do? Per the bylaws, the Board's duties include "advising and mediating, if
necessary, any grievances or appeals." That, like much of the bylaws, is open to a great deal of
interpretation. They could just receive grievances and decide by a straight up or down vote who
wins. They could, as they do now [more or less], try to resolve all issues through mediation with
as little Board involvement as possible. They could slap an additional layer of Board oversight on
the current system. Or they could go the the complicated route, as is the tendency whenever they
have a difficult issue [witness the "data repository statement" and the privacy policy discussions].
They could, for instance, create yet another committee with multiple Board and non-Board
members, lots of rules about tenure, voting, confidentiality, reporting, yadda yadda yadda. They
could develop complicated mediation and/or arbitration procedures, provide for an extensive
appeal process involving the full Board, and count and account for every last broken finger nail
within the Project. But, you know, people still wouldn't be happy with it. It is an unfortunate truth
that the majority of the population not only does not possess the wisdom of Solomon, they also
have a unfortunate tendency to be sore losers.

So, lets not get so complicated. The current mediation system isn't failing because it sucks, its
failing because people don't know what they are doing, because no one is taking responsibility for
shepherding grievances through it, because the Board collectively appears more interested in
discussing how to handle grievances than in actually handling them, and because no one in a
position to make a difference has really put in the effort to ensure not only that the process looks
fair but that it IS fair. At this point, the best approach might be to simply appoint or elect a
Grievance Coordinator from among the Board members, impose some accountability and
reporting procedures to prevent grievances from falling through the cracks or taking forever to
get mediated, and just go with the current system. Someone who is clearly more motivated and
passionate about the issue than the outgoing Grievance Coordinator would be a good choice. It
also might be worth amending the current procedures to include mediators from outside the
Board, in the hopes that somewhere in our vast pool of volunteer talent there are five or more
people who both understand what mediation is and have experience doing it. There might even be
a few IP specialists out there who can advise and mediate copyright stuff.

Whatever. We just can no longer see any benefit to the continued wrangling over whose version
of what motion will get to be voted on. Maybe we'll file a grievance...

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Blowing the whistle since 1998

posted by merope at 8:45 AM 10 comments   
Friday, July 08, 2005
Warm and Fuzzy
Several bricks shy of a load...its Your Daily Board Show!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: As some of you may know, USGenWeb will be
participating in the upcoming Federation of Genealogical Societies 2005 Conference. FGS is one
of the most respected genealogical organizations in the United States, their shindig is one of the
largest national genealogical conferences going, and this year it will be held in lovely [if a little too
clean] Salt Lake City, UT on September 7-10, 2005. USGenWeb is sponsoring and staffing a
booth where we can showcase our sites, promote free online genealogy, and talk with folks about
how they can participate in USGenWeb both as a user and as a volunteer.

Several thousand people are expected to attend the conference and this is a great opportunity for
USGenWeb to strut its stuff, hang out with both professional and amateur genealogists, and to get
USGenWeb's name out there in the genealogical field [we are sometimes surprised at how often
people email saying "what is USGenWeb?"]. There are many benefits to attending. You'll be in the
heart of genealogy's Mecca, and who knows, you might actually get some genealogy done. Plus,
conferences are fun; they are learning experiences, there's all sorts of interesting people at them,
the partying is fabulous [even in Salt Lake], and there's usually millions of cool things to want and
buy. [And if you stand at the booth, you can even get a spiff exhibitors' badge!] Several prominent
USGenWeb members are coordinating the booth setup and are seeking volunteers to help staff it
throughout the conference, as well as help with providing internet hookups and the like. So, we
would encourage anyone who might be in the Salt Lake area, or close enough to travel to it, to
consider helping out at the booth for a bit. If you can't be in the area personally, there are other
ways you can help make this event a big postive for USGenWeb. Please contact Mike St. Clair
[mike@saintclair.org], who is helping to organize the booth, for all the details.

General information about the FGS conference is here:
http://www.fgs.org/2005conf/FGS-2005.htm

We now return you to our regularly scheduled gripefest.

SOMEONE SHOULD FILE A GRIEVANCE: The not-so-polite discussion of the proposed
grievance procedures committee goes on and on. Yesterday, Angie Rayfield finally registered a
formal protest over the situation, noting "The Chair has ignored repeated questions to explain her
actions and justify them under either parliamentary procedures or the organization's by-laws. The
Chair has also repeatedly...treated requests and motions by one member differently than the
requests and motions of another member. Parliamentary procedure does NOT give the Chair an
blank check to pick & choose which motions she will acknowledge, and which she will ignore.
You cannot rule a motion & second out of order (for unexplained and apparently unexplainable
reasons) and then choose to solicit a motion on the same topic, simply because you prefer the
approach of the second motion."

Bettie Wood and David Morgan both have joined the debate, more or less on Angie's side, with
David wondering when exactly the Board voted on a set of procedures, and Bettie wondering
"With a new & different set of members & a new name won't that make it a new committee? I
can't find where the "old" committee has been disbanded." After their comments, Shari asked
parliamentarian Roger Swafford for a ruling on Angie's protest. [Funny, we thought she was
consulting him all this time on her various pronouncements. Oh well, no matter, its just a bump in
the road and probably won't slow up the juggernaut too much. Shari still has a little over seven
weeks in her tenure. If she can get this ball rolling in a few days, she'll have her new grievance
committee and procedures before she leaves office.]

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Taking our marbles and going home since 1998

posted by merope at 6:10 AM 3 comments   
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Flying Blind
Like a bump on a log...its Your Daily Board Show!

FLYING MONKEYS: Shari finally called the July meeting to order and posted the following
agenda:

"1. Call to Order
2. Reading, Correction, Approval, or Disposition of Minutes
3. Grievance Procedure Drafting Committee
4. Logo Contest Voting - Discussion
5. New Business
a. Family History Month Committee
b. Evaluation of Special Projects (discussion)
c. State web sites checkup (discussion)
d. EC Procedure Change? - Eligibility Verification (general discussion)
e. Other new business (if necessary)
6. Announcements
7. Adjournment"

[We're thinking they'd best not wait on that logo issue too long.]

The only other business discussed in the meeting was a more or less pointless conversation on the
proposed Grievance Procedures Committee. It went something like this:

Angie: "...basically as long as you can dump the current committee members
everything's good?...this bears a very strong resemblance to the motion I made that you just
declared out of order, with the exception...that I didn't suggest throwing out the current
members."

Shari: "What I'm trying to do is to tip the balance of the committee makeup from AB to non-AB
majority. These procedures will impact them primarily, and I'd like to see the procedures crafted
primarily from their viewpoint...I'd like to see...2 AB members and 7 non-AB members. If 7
volunteers don't step up initially, I'd like to see the committee be able to get started with the 2 AB
members and however many non-AB members, and I'd like to see continued attempts to fill the
open non-AB positions...until the 7 non-AB positions are filled, or until the Grievance Procedures
have been completed, whichever comes first." [Shari also suggested the wording for a motion.]

Betsy: "Angie...I don't understand where you are getting that Shari is dumping the current
members...all the members dumped the committee, including me. I do not intend to serve on a
new committee...perhaps you should volunteer. I am for letting non-AB members write the
grievance procedures. If you are for this being a non-AB project, then do second the motion."

Betsy: "I move that a Grievance Procedures Drafting Committee (GPDC) be convened, whose
purpose will be to develop and present a new set of procedures and
policies for the handling of grievances and mediation requests within the USGenWeb Project. This
committee will be composed of 2 USGenWeb Project Advisory Board members and 7
USGenWeb Project members from outside the Advisory Board. A call for volunteers will go out
upon passage of this motion. If more than 7 non-AB volunteers come forward, consideration of
providing a mix of volunteers (CC/LC, SC, SPC) will be used in selection of GPDC members. If
initial response to this call results in less than 7 non-AB volunteers, the committee will begin work
with the members it has, and continued attempts to fill the remaining positions will be made until
the 7 non-AB positions are filled or until the new Grievance Procedures have been completed,
whichever comes first. The GPDC will meet and carry out all work and discussion on a mailing
list provided by the NC. All other USGenWeb members will be welcome to subscribe in
"read-only" status to this list to observe the committee's work. A second mailing list will be
provided by the NC to which any USGenWeb member may subscribe in order to comment,
discuss, and make suggestions. The first order of business for the GPDC will be to select a
chairperson from amongst themselves. The goal will be to have the Grievance Procedures
completed within 6 weeks. This deadline can be extended, if necessary, upon request of the
GPDC. Upon completion, the Grievance Procedures and Policies will be presented to the full
Advisory Board for
a vote on their acceptance." [This is essentially the wording provided by Shari.]

David: "Shouldn't the old motion be rescinded?"

Shari: "...the old motion was actually completed. The committee reported out a
set of procedures which did NOT pass when voted on by the AB." [That's news. We don't recall
Angie presenting her proposal as the work of the committee.]

Angie: "...dare I point out that you can't go from 5 existing members on the committee...to 2
members on a committee...without removing people from the committee?...I'm sure it's just a slip
of the tongue that Betsy refers to it as a new committee, despite Shari's insistence that she's
"repopulating" the existing committee...The committee chair makes suggestions, and is told a new
motion is required. The RAL makes suggestions, and the NC waves a magic wand & creates a
"new" committee. The committee chair makes a motion, and the NC waves that magic wand and
declares the motion "out of order." Apparently, only the committee chair is permitted no say in
the workings of the committee; the RAL & NC may, however, rearrange the committee as they
see fit...Perhaps the NC could have actually read the motion I proposed before declaring it out of
order. Except, of course, that then she couldn't arrange to have it replaced by a motion more to
her liking......it certainly appears that the whole idea is to get rid of anything accomplished to this
point...It gives me the distinct impression that perhaps we didn't come up with the desired &
pre-ordained outcome, so time to just toss it out and start over with a new committee that's more
willing to toe the party line."

Shari: "I have explained what my goals are regarding the GPDC a couple of times now, so I won't
repeat myself again...The AB voted down the procedures that you wrote as Chair of the previous
committee...a fresh start is warranted, and the newly-instructed committee...must not be
encumbered by any requirement to utilize the defeated procedures...Angie, the sarcasm needs to
end now."

Shari has asked for a second to her [oops, we mean Betsy's] motion, but none has been
forthcoming thus far.

[We'd have more commentary on this, but its pointless too. Angie can't win this fight. Shari holds
all the cards and appears entirely willing to rewrite recent history and to play semantics.
Shari's...oops, Betsy's...motion renames the committee, gives it an entirely new set of members,
and a new charge. Sounds like a new committee to us, but what do we know? Personally, we
figure one more word out of Angie's mouth and she'll find herself muzzled for the rest of Shari's
term.]

In other Board business, the minutes of the June meeting were posted. Apparently finishing the
minutes a few days early in one month excuses four months of not posting minutes at all.

PEER PRESSURE: Shortly after yesterday's publication, OHGenWeb SC Sandra Quinn
announced the formation of a general discussion list for the OHGW CCs. The editorial board of
the DBS thanks Sandy for announcing this to the DBS readership shortly after she announced it
on the OHGW state list. The new list will be administered by ASC Lorraine Newsome, which has
caused some consternation among the CCs, who feel that Lorraine is not likely to permit much in
the way of actual discussion. Shortly after Sandy's announcement, a longish discussion ensued on
the state list about the alternate CC list that was formed when Sandy clamped down on the main
list and on the need for guidelines. To her credit, Sandy hasn't terminated the discussion as of yet,
but it will probably be diverted to the backwater of the new list once the new list is established.

Sandy, BTW, is "tired of CC's making an issue of" the proposed 24 hour response time for roll
calls. Apparently, she is physically jacked into the net at all times and expects her CCs to do the
same, just in case she gets a wild hair and decides to check up on all of them. Besides, if the NC
requires a 24 hour turn-around on roll calls, that ought to be good enough for OHGW. She's also
claiming that there aren't any guidelines she needs to follow, although the code of ethics and rules
for elections instituted in the past have been pointed out to her repeatedly and they are posted on
webpages she maintains.

OHGW CCs have also been all abuzz in the last day or so over inexplicable messages many of
them have received from the Election Committee. Apparently Sandy sent her messed up state list
over to the EC, and the EC is now required to double-check and correct all the inaccuracies. Its
not clear that this has effected anyone's ability to vote in the current elections, however, so it
might be just one more minor annoyance.

SPAM: NC candidate Linda Haas Davenport has used the logo issue as an excuse to email
apparently every local coordinator in the project, asking them to review the logos and vote for the
logo of their choice. If you haven't gotten one of these yet, don't be alarmed when you do. She's
just utilizing the time-honored USGW tradition of emailing all the project members at election
time. Who you are generally determines whether that is considered spam or not. She also wants to
know if we'd all be willing to be signed up to a project-wide announcement list that "would send
out a few e-mails each year notifying you about important issues". Personally, we have fabulous
SCs and don't need to be subscribed to another list so we can get everything twice [or more, since
most of the announcements also come over Board-L and the regional lists].

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Kinder and gentler since 1998

posted by merope at 6:10 AM 9 comments   
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Out With The Old, In With The Not Quite So Old
Where's the beef?...its Your Daily Board Show!

HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING: Although the July session of the Board is not yet
officially called to order and no agenda has been published, they've already managed to
accomplish some stuff this month. At Bettie Wood's suggestion, Shari Handley directed the
webmaster to create a page describing the various official and unofficial USGenWeb mailing lists.
Included are ALL, DISCUSS, BOARD, and all four regional lists, along with some probably
unintentionally droll list descriptions ["respectful and kind", heh]. Why it has taken nine years to
put this information online was not addressed.

The List of Lists can be found at http://www.usgenweb.com/volunteers/lists.shtml If you want to
go the long way, its linked under "Member-Communications" in the Volunteer section of the
home page.

[On an interesting side note, while we were perusing the fabulous new page for mailing lists, we
noticed a link for webmasters. According to the information found there, USGenWeb was without
a webmaster from sometime in 2000 to sometime in 2004.]

Angie is still asking her questions about the grievance committee, and Shari is still alternating
between ignoring her and slapping her down just because she can. Bettie asked about the status of
Shari's call for volunteers, and Shari was forced to admit that the response has been unimpressive.
She noted, "...there were not enough non-AB volunteers to "re-populate" the committee with 7
non-AB people...so all this is academic now." She suggested that the Board start fresh and work
up a new motion for a Grievance Procedures Committee, and laid out her own vision: "I would
like to see a committee that is heavy on the non-AB side, with just 2 or 3 AB members MAX. 6
or 7 non-AB members seemed about right to me, but clearly we will need to more effectively
recruit from our membership...I'd like to see a mix of SCs and LCs and SPCs...I would like to see
the GPC members choose their own chair from amongst themselves...It may be an effective
strategy to use TWO lists...One list to which the GPC members are subscribed and may post to,
and to which other USGenWeb members may subscribe in "read-only" mode. And a second list to
which any USGenWeb member may subscribe AND post...I would also like to give a deadline for
completion of the procedures. I would think that 6 weeks should be plenty of time." [Hmmm..six
weeks. That would be right close to the end of her tenure, wouldn't it?]

Last but not least, Shari informed the Board yesterday that she is devloping a "New Member
Survival Guide" that will be posted on the national website. Thus far she has included the
following: "...a short introductory paragraph, [and] a section on Project Structure." She plans to
add information on how to vote in USGenWeb, a list of "Helpful Abbreviations", and a link to the
new Members Communication page. While we don't expect the n00b survival guide to contain the
most valuable piece of information any USGenWeb newcomer should have ["keep your mouth
shut and your head down"], Shari is soliciting content for the guide. You can send it to her
directly or via your regional representative.

LOGO LOGIC: So far we have not seen the promised discussion on the logo vote, but it seems
from a brief perusal of the DISCUSS list that the idea of altering the rules for selecting a new logo
now that voting has begun and ballots have been cast is not flying well among the chattering class.
We've been discussing this interesting state of affairs with some little birds who claim to have been
"in the room" when the idea of a two-step procedure for selecting the logo was initially discussed
a few months ago. Apparently, although the idea was floated to have an initial vote that would
cull the selection down to some manageable number, Betsy Mills and Ellen Pack [who is
apparently some kind of honorary Board member until the EC makes it official] didn't like the idea
and managed to squash it. So be sure to write and thank them when we end up with some funky,
mismatched logos that just happened to be the "very favorite" of half a dozen people.

NOT SO FAST: We haven't reported on the doings in OHGW for awhile because its been pretty
quiet there these days, and hopes were running high that the situation may have resolved itself
without going nuclear. Yesterday, however, in response to a member's request for a new list and
restatement of the purpose of the current state list, SC Sandra Quinn posted the following: "The
purpose of this OHGen-L list...is administrative. It is listed at rootsweb as the administrative list
for OHGenWeb. It is proper to place info about your county which would be important to other
CC's on this list, or questions you may have about programs etc., and for me to send you the info
about things important to you as a member of OHGenWeb. I am only interested in this
administrative list and will do my very best to make sure every one of the CC's gets all the
important info relating to matters of USGenWeb and OHGenWeb through this list." In other
words, there will be no new list and no discussion permitted on the current one. Some OHGW
members are particularly concerned that the SC will not allow them to freely discuss and develop
new state guidelines [a topic many of them are currently very interested in]. For now, the OHGW
CCs are limited to discussion on an alternate list in which their SC has expressed no interest
whatsoever and which she will most likely feel no concern about just ignoring should they try to
come up with any sort of state policies for the members to vote on. These are not the sort of
conditions which generally foster congeniality and productive teamwork and frustration levels are
starting to rise again.

[Speaking of that list, we hear Jan Cortez stalked off it in another of her huffs a day or so ago
after someone brought up her rambuctious past on the list. She must have some kind of record for
stalking off in a huff; we can't recall the last time she left a list or a state without some kind of
dramatic exit speech.]

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Paving the road to hell since 1998

posted by merope at 6:15 AM 9 comments   
Monday, July 04, 2005
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident
One heck of a firecracker...its Your Daily Board Show!

LEGGO MY LOGO: Now that the election is in full swing, a couple of project members are
challenging the way that the new logos are being chosen. We'll let Dick Harrison articulate the
problem:

"There are 90 entries in the logo contest. There were 480 voters for National Coordinator in the
last election...it seems to me we are likely to have a new logo that is the choice of fewer than a
dozen people. It would have been a better plan to eliminate most of the possibilities in the primary
election and have a run-off among the top few vote-getters. That would lead to stronger support
for the new project logo...I imagine there will be agitation to revisit this issue before much time
has passed."

Tina Vickery protested that the EC was just following the Board's orders [which is entirely true],
and after some back and forth on the list, Shari Handley agreed to take up Dick's suggestion with
the Board as its first order of business on Tuesday. [This is how they will get out of having to
accept the Jolly Roger as a voter-approved alternate logo.] We were very surprised to discover
that each member would be allowed only one vote for the new logo. This may have seemed like a
good idea back when the contest was first starting out, but once the contender pool exceeded 50
entries, they probably should have reconsidered this approach. After all, it can't be any harder for
the software to count four votes per person than it is to count one vote per person. Ah well,
perhaps we will get lucky, the electorate will vote overwhelmingly for a handful of logos, and the
path will be clear.


PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY: The issue of the mysteriously vanishing posts has apparently been
resolved, if not exactly solved. Yesterday, after some debate, the general consensus in the
newsbunker was pretty much that, although most Board members would probably have gladly
colluded to deny Paulette Carpenter a fair chance to rebut the charges levied against her, Mike St.
Clair was not likely to have gone along with that kind of approach. He might have agreed it was
necessary and desirable to muzzle her, but we can't see him lying about it. Since he assured us,
twice, that Paulette was an unmoderated subscriber to the BRC list and that he had not
intercepted any messages from her, we decided to look into this issue further. [We've also heard
through the grapevine that a couple of the other listowners have claimed not to have received
Paulette's post.] We spent some time testing all the email addresses in Paulette's original message.
The ones to lists we subscribe to went through and the others apparently bounced to the
listowners. None bounced to us so the addresses were clearly good. Then, thinking perhaps that
multiple addresses in the To: line were for some reason against Root$web's arcane rules, we tried
that. Again, there were no bounces and the messages went through. A few other project members
reported that their multiple lists posts were also going through easily. It was also apparently true
that other Root$web lists were working just fine throughout the day that Paulette sent her original
messages; we could not find any traffic anywhere noting even a short period of downtime or any
indication that others were having trouble with missing messages.

While we were wracking our small brains trying to figure out how anyone could block messages
to all Root$web lists from one person without listowners being aware of it, we were recalled to
the glory days of the banning of the Root$web Four. Back in the day, whenever Brian "KMA"
Leverich got huffy with someone he'd have his minions block their addresses at the server level.
For a while, when he was having a hissy fit over the Coombs family lists and websites, he
appeared to have actually blocked every post to any Root$web list that contained the url for the
Coombs family website. All of the Root$web Four basically got the same treatment. For a few
months messages sent to any Root$web address just disappeared; after that Brain had a little
responder turned on that said something along the lines of "the server is not accepting mail from
this address." For that initial few months, however, we were essentially having the same
experience that Paulette had a couple of days ago. Our messages would just disappear with no
trace. This is an ideal solution to the thorny issue of trying to get several people to go along with
banning an individual's posts. Brian could never have gotten hundreds of listowners to agree to
banning us, and its unlikely Shari [or whoever] could have gotten Mike St. Clair, and perhaps
even Bettie Wood, to go along with a similar scheme. But if you can get messages intercepted at
the server, everyone involved can legitimately and honestly claim that they aren't involved in any
plot, never intercepted any messages, and never, in fact, received any messages to intercept.
Those pesky people with integrity won't even know its happening. This is a surprisingly simple
thing to do. All it takes is a friend at Root$web. We are fairly sure that many Board members
have friends at Root$web.

In any event, testing that theory required Paulette, and when she got back online late yesterday,
she sent test messages through to some of her lists. After they appeared in the list archives, she
tried sending her rebuttal message again yesterday afternoon and they all appeared to have gone
through as well. Thus far, none of the list-owners has publicly chastised her for posting the
message [that would be bad form indeed], although one of them has closed discussion on the issue
and the BRC list has been shut down entirely since it has outlived its usefulness.

The mystery of the disappearing messages, although not exactly explained, at least appears to no
longer be an issue. Was it due to a server glitch that coincidentally occurred right when Paulette
sent her original messages and that apparently affected only her, or was it a nefarious plot to deny
her a forum long enough that the original charges would have stuck in peoples' minds and her
rebuttal would seem too little too late? While the whole plot idea does seem a little sordid and
petty [and hugely prone to backfiring], its been our experience that some Board members are not
above that sort of thing when they think the stakes are high. And the server glitch idea seems a
little convenient. But you all make the call. We're sure it was all just an unfortunate
misunderstanding.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Off the deep end since 1998

posted by merope at 8:10 AM 4 comments   
Sunday, July 03, 2005
You Get The Picture
Moderated, shmoderated...its Your Daily Board Show!

SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS: Yesterday, NC Candidate Paulette Carpenter
sent a rebuttal message to several USGenWeb lists [DISCUSS, SW/SC regional, SEMA regional,
NWPL regional, the BRC list, the alternate CC list, and the SEMA alternate list] in which she
addressed several of the concerns raised by sitting Board members against her in the last couple of
days. The message [which is printed in full below with her permission] has thus far appeared on
the alternate SEMA and CC lists but has not appeared on any Root$web list managed by a Board
member. In other words, it has apparently been blocked, by the Board members that manage
them, on the DISCUSS list [Shari Handley], the SEMA regional list [Shari Handley], the SW/SC
regional list [Bettie Wood], the NW/PL regional list [Gail Meyer Kilgore], and the Bylaws
Revision Committee discussion list [Mike St. Clair, IIRC]. Apparently it is OK to allow smear
campaigns to proceed with little to no inteference, but not to allow the person being smeared to
respond to the charges in the forum in which they were made. You really have to wonder, why
Paulette? They've all happily forwarded mail to their lists from NC candidate Sherri Hall, who has
been abusing the KYGW CCs for months now, but Paulette is prevented from even a mild
response to the vague charges levied against her by sitting Board members. And, we will note, we
are extremely surprised to find that Mike St. Clair and Bettie Wood have apparently gone along
with this censorship.

UNFORGIVEABLE OVERSIGHT: Several of our loyal readers have written to ask why we did
not include the burning questions of the new logos and the bylaws amendments in our Election
Cheat Sheet, and we are sad to admit it was just an oversight. So, for those of you who really
want to know our opinions, here they are:

LOGOS: This is an easy one. Our favorite here in the DBS newscube is AC4 [the Jolly Roger
logo]. While we think it would make a fabulous official logo, we will be pleased enough if it gets
enough votes to be one of the alternates. For those of you who have a sense of history and
tradition, the current logo is AB5. Many of the proposed logos are quite nice, but most of them
are very busy and will not reproduce well in the small format preferred by many CCs. Nor will
they mesh with the current version of the USGenWeb home page. [Although a redesign of the
home page to match our new logo might be in order. We think a pirate theme would be entirely
appropriate, especially for the Archives.]

Please note that you will get only one vote for a logo, not the four that many people were
expecting. This of course means that we are going to end up with logos that the majority of the
project cannot stand and will refuse to use. The data entry field only accepts three characters, so
leave the dash out. Also, follow the instructions carefully and do not leave the voting page to go
check out the logos again, since you may not be allowed back into your ballot.

BYLAWS AMENDMENTS: This is a thornier issue. The proposed amendments taken together
will reconfigure the Board to eliminate three seats [Archives, Census Project, Tombstone Project]
and replace them with one seat [Special Projects]. The upsides to this are: 1) Eliminating both the
requirement that the project have a Census Project and the contentious Census Project
representative seat may finally put to rest the years-old battle over which is the "true" Census
Project. This will free the way for the Board to admit them both into the Project and to allow all
members of both projects to vote for the new Special Projects representative. 2) These
amendments allow currently unrepresented Special Projects [Kidz, Family Group Sheets,
American Griots, etc.] and any future Special Projects to field candidates and vote for the Special
Projects representative. The downsides are 1) The amendments reduce the total number of voting
Board seats from 15 to 13 two without reducing the number needed for a quorum or altering the
majority needed for issues to pass. This means that a smaller number of Board members can
prevent motions from passing, either by denying a quorum or by forming a bloc vote. 2) Many
project members have expressed concern that the new seat will become a de facto Archives seat,
since that project apparently has more members than all the other Special Projects combined. The
other Special Projects members will thus be no more represented than they are now. 3) This will
increase the workload for the Election Committee, who will have to track eligible voters and
candidates from a multitude of projects instead of just two. 4) None of the Special Projects were
consulted when these proposed amendments were written and from various conversations we
have seen, they are none too pleased about it. While consulting with the victims of your actions is
not strictly required, it would have been polite for Betsy to have at least included them in the
discussions of their fate.

The biggest downside to the proposed amendments is that, if they pass, they go into effect
immediately, per Sturgis. There is no provision anywhere in the amendments or our current
bylaws to delay their implementation or to allow currently seated representatives to finish out
their terms before instituting the new Board configuration [which would delay implementation for
at least a year and probably two years]. If the amendments pass, on August 1 there will be no
Census, Tombstone, or Archives seats on the Board. The new Special Projects seat will be vacant,
since there is no candidate for it in the current election and under the terms of the proposed
amendments all members of recognized Special Projects must be allowed to vote for the seat.
Neither the drafter of the amendment, its sponsors, nor the Board appear to have given any
thought whatsoever to this issue and the disruption it will cause. [Although, should the
amendments pass, we imagine they will just try to appoint Cyndi Enfinger to the seat or run some
kind of show poll that will have the same outcome.]

So, we run hot and cold on this one. We are not entirely sure that "resolving" the census problem
is worth the torment that realigning the Board would cause the Project for the rest of the summer,
or the further abuse of the bylaws and Sturgis it would encourage in the Board. Maybe it is.
*shrug* At the moment, we are leaning toward a no vote, but that could change.

=====

NC Candidate Paulette Carpenter's rebuttal message that several Board members apparently do
not want you to see:

[posted with permission]

Good Morning folks,

List admins: I just wanted to clarify, but do not want to offend any of you, so my replies are
quick, to the point, no bashing involved. I ask that the list admins for the all the regions except the
SEMA and Discuss to please unsub me after this email, these are your areas, and you have work
you and others would rather do other than continue this. I appreciate your hospitality over the last
couple of weeks.

Now, some clarifications:

1st: To Betsy's statement about a private email to the DBS and or to public:

I went back and checked that email, and there were two people you responded to, again, I stick
by my earlier statements regarding the information being passed to the DBS. I will not sit here and
accuse anyone. Also in regards to this someone asked specifically would I forward a private email.
NO

2nd: To Darilee's endorsement

Darilee and I do not have "history" together. I do not know Darilee any better than I know David
Morgan, Jan Cortez, Denise Woodside, etc...you get my point. In reference to the statements
about the "grievance". I have never been an advisor to a grievance. I was a Personal
Representative to the Advisory Board for Richard Pettys during his hearings last winter. I assisted
Richard in composition of timely answers to the AB if questions ever came. I was in no way
involved in Mr. Petty's conversations to or with his attorney's, there were never messages from
me with statements that I endorsed or was involved in any kind of "suit". This project membership
may verify that with Mr. Pettys, and subsequently with his attorney's. Anything that was made
public about/concerning that "hearing" came directly from Mr. Petty's, and he has outright
admitted that.

I represented Mr. Pettys so that he could get a fair hearing with our AB. I would represent
anyone in this membership should they need or ask me to.

3rd and Last: Mr. Samuelson's statement that I threatened the Archives

I don't threaten anyone. The statement he is referring to was not on any of these lists, it was the
CC list, where a discussion of "data harvesting" was taking place. It was specific that some people
are convinced and concerned that data contributed by them, or others has been taken and posted
in the Archives without permission from the contributor, and that there is or had been a grievance
to such from one of our members. The statement specifically in it's entirety said that I wouldn't
put up with such nonsense out of them or anyone. (Paraphrased for the respect of this list) It
wasn't a threat to them. I stand by the fact that it doesn't have to be the USGW Project or
Archives to fit into that belief of mine, I wouldn't tolerate it out of any affiliation that I have with
any project period.

Thank you for the opportunity to reply, I was under the impression that this year's elections were
going to be clean and finger pointing free. You will not see me reply to anything else in regards to
these things on any list. I just refuse to participate in slandering any candidate.

Oh, thanks to the candidates for not participating. I noticed.

Please, everyone, vote for who you wish! And have a safe, and happy Fourth of July weekend!
Paulette Carpenter
NC Candidate

=====

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Setting them straight since 1998

posted by merope at 7:55 AM 3 comments   
Saturday, July 02, 2005
The Truth Is Whatever You Can Make People Believe
Can't stay away...its Your Daily Board Show!

WHEN THE GOING GETS ROUGH: You know that the usual suspects are getting worried
when they start orchestrating personal attacks on someone they'd usually pay no heed to. Within
the last day or so several sitting and former Board members apparently came to the sudden and
simultaneous realization that NC candidate Paulette Carpenter might actually have a chance at
winning. And like rats pouring out of the sewers they have come forth to besmirch her reputation
wherever possible. To whit:

On DISCUSS, Betsy "Nasty As I Wanna Be" Mills has spent the better part of two days trying to
lure Paulette into some kind of admission of guilt over one of the Sooper Sekrit quotes posted to
the DBS a few days ago. Although Paulette has parried every thrust, Betsy continues to publicly
challenge her integrity. Betsy claims to have sent the email quoted in the DBS to only two people,
and that may have actually been true. We would, however, caution Betsy to think really hard on
who that second person was, and the meaning of the words "dangerously unreliable," "not clear
on the concept," and "misplaced trust" before she goes off again on one of her righteous binges.
We guess this sort public attack must be what Betsy means when she says on her campaign page
"it is about the positive."

Darilee Bednar has posted a plea on the DISCUSS list, two of the regional lists, and at least one
state list for her fellow project members to vote for anyone but Paulette. She based her appeal on
her experience with Paulette when Paulette was serving as Richard Pettys' representative during
his trial, and Darilee seems incapable of understanding the difference between Richard's
contributions to the trial and Paulette's role as his advisor and spokesperson. Apparently, in
Darilee's little world, someone who advises a defendant before the great and powerful Board is as
guilty as they are. She also hints, without providing any evidence, that Paulette was the source of
leaks from the trial, when Darilee actually knows that is not true. Board member and candidate
Bettie Wood, the list manager for the SW/SC regional list, has indicated that she isn't yet sure
whether or not she will allow Paulette to rebut the charges in the forum in which they were made.

Jan Cortez has decided to attack Paulette on another front. Over on the SEMA regional list she is
obliquely accusing Paulette of insufficient loyalty to USGenWeb and the Archives by pointing out
her affiliations with other online genealogy projects and questioning her ability to promote and
serve more than one organization. Jan fails to mention her own on-and-off affiliation with these
same projects, nor that her departures from them were not motivated by any particular loyalty to
USGenWeb but by her petty and myopic fixation on abusing Pam Reitsch. Board member Linda
Blum Barton has weighed in with her "concern" that Paulette won't support the Archives
sufficiently because she has commented in the recent past that when the Archives steal data they
should be punished for it.

Even Jana *My Asterisk Key Is Stuck* Black has emerged from the nut fields to weigh in on
trust, duty, and honor, topics with which she appears to have only a passing familiarity. She seems
quite enamoured of the idea that once we elect these people we shouldn't trouble our little heads
about them further, no matter what wickedness or buffoonery transpires at the national level. Her
objection to Paulette seems to be that she thinks Paulette has somehow misrepresented
BOARD-EXEC to the electorate. We actually think that Paulette has come remarkably close to
the truth about that list. Although we can't participate in the forum on which Jana spouts her
fantasies [and if we did we'd get banned for, you know, being negative], let's just say we have a
somewhat different memory of the year we played with Jana in the Sekrit Sandbox. She talks as if
everything was roses and happiness, but it wasn't that way at all. We fought all the time. And we
were pretty nasty to each other. And Jana was right out ahead of the pack on that.

You will note that all of these attacks were instigated by sitting Board members, at least one of
whom is up for reelection. Many of them, along with the several "me toos" chorused by the Sekrit
Sandbox's crack team of character assassins, have occurred on the DISCUSS list [as well as other
places]. And despite her rules about discussing "personnel" issues on the DISCUSS list, Shari
Handley has done basically nothing to stop them. She has permitted Betsy's innuendos and attacks
without any comment whatsoever. She published a very mild admonishment of Darilee, but saved
her actual threats and moderations for those who defended Paulette's integrity and/or decried
Darilee's attack. Can you imagine how swift and sure the retribution would have been if anyone
had gone after Linda Davenport or Don Kelly the way people have gone after Paulette the last
couple of days? We shudder to think.

When we see this many of the usual suspects come out of their holes all at the same time and
focus their attacks on a single candidate, we really start to wonder what they are so afraid of. At
least its nice to see how well they can work together when they have a common goal.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Suffering fools gladly since 1998

posted by merope at 7:05 PM 5 comments   
Friday, July 01, 2005
Send In The Clowns
A DAILY BOARD SHOW SPECIAL ELECTION SUPPLEMENT!

YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY, YOU TAKES YOUR CHANCES: Along about this time every
year, we get a lot of mail here in the DBS newsbunker wondering who we, the DBS staff, will
vote for. Until yesterday, this has been moot, because no one in the DBS newsbunker has been
allowed to vote in any elections for a very long time. But we got our password yesterday and we
are feeling a little frisky. Normally, we don't do this publicly, because we don't want to hurt
anyone's chances or feelings [snort], but we don't have a dog in the race this year, so here is the
first [and possibly last] Daily Board Show Election Cheat Sheet. We think everyone is pretty
much up for a change of scenery on the Board next year, so the word for the day is "nice." Watch
for it.

Please note: The following information is our personal opinion, formed from our knowledge and
experience of the candidates within and without USGenWeb. Use at your own risk!

NATIONAL COORDINATOR: This is a sad, sad lot of choices. There are currently four
candidates. First up is Paulette Carpenter. She is relatively new to USGenWeb, but in her time
with the project she has served ably on the Bylaws Revision Committee and also represented
another member before the Board for months in a discipline hearing. Although her ideas for the
project are not truly novel, she does seem to hold them sincerely, and although she has been
described as perhaps too nice for USGenWeb politics, she has held up quite well under all the
little "swiftboat" attacks launched against her as soon as she started looking like a viable
candidate. There's certainly a spine in that girl. Next up is Linda Haas Davenport. Although she
has some hinky ideas about holding meetings every three months, Linda is pretty much a vote for
the status quo; she's admitted it and seems proud of it. So if you like DISCUSS moderated to
within an inch of its life and an ongoing Sooper Sekrit Board meeting where your elected
representatives feel free to trash you, she's your girl. Door Number 3 is Sherri Hall, SC of
KYGenWeb, and she's not much of a prize. Sherri is currently the defendant in two grievances,
both of which stemmed from her ham-handed abuse of KYGW CCs. She apparently believes in
the "iron fist, velvet glove" style of management, but sometimes slips up on who gets to see the
glove and who gets the fist. Lately, she's been professional, friendly, and helpful in public, but
having seen some of her management "philosophy" in action, we have to wonder how long it
would be before she would alienate everyone on the Board. Then we have Don Kelly. We are not
exactly sure what a vote for Don Kelly would be a vote for. He's a verbal loose cannon and seems
to have no clue even what day it is sometimes. As someone else described it, he has "a 12-step
plan to encourage greater participation by members, currently consisting of 8 steps," [although we
count 7] which pretty much sums Don up. On the plus side, he is easily the most entertaining
member of USGenWeb and having him as NC would really, really boost the circulation numbers
of the DBS.

REPRESENTATIVE AT LARGE: We have three candidates to choose from in this race. First is
Charles Barnum, a decent and sincere guy, if a little emotional. Unfortunately, although we very
much like Charles, he does have a reputation for inconstancy. He files a lot of grievances and
withdraws most of them. He volunteers for committees and then rescinds his offers. We just can't
believe he'd be able to stick with a full two year term as RAL. Then we have Betsy Mills. Betsy is
most definitely Not Nice. In fact, she is one of the nastiest pieces of work in all of USGenWeb.
Despite the claim on her very insubstantial campaign site that its all about the positive, Betsy goes
negative faster and with more gusto than just about anyone else in this project. She's mostly
famous for lying to her constituents, refusing to accept email from her constituents, ignoring her
constituents, and calling her constituents jerks. We can't figure out why if she finds the position so
very taxing, she keeps volunteering for it. It probably has something to do with warming the seat.
Last up is Marvelous Mike St. Clair. If we looked up "nice" on wikipedia, we would not be at all
surprised to find a link to his website there. Now, Mike seems to think that whenever we say he's
nice that is some sort of disparaging remark. But its not. We like nice very much. Besides, under
that squishy exterior apparently beats the heart of a lion. Mike has held up quite well under some
pointless and endless questioning about his months-long absence as Board Secretary and his short
tenure on the EC, and as near as we can tell he has responded to every single question asked of
him on every single list. He's been a big mover and shaker in the Candidate Forum, and seems to
sincerely want to improve communication within the project, even among those the Board and its
minions have cast out. Yes, we are aware that he is less than perfect. He's homies with the usual
suspects, doesn't much argue with the status quo, and seems unwilling to go out on a limb on
anything controversial. On the plus side, he is a vastly accomplished person IRL and the
USGenWeb sorely needs that. He may end up being just more of the same, but he'll probably stick
around for his full term and he probably won't put any of his constituents on auto-reject.

ARCHIVES REPRESENTATIVE: As is usual in the Archives races, there is only one candidate
for the seat, so Cyndi Enfinger has already won and will be back on the Board for another term.
Unless the bylaws amendment passes.

NE/NC STATE: Its Scott Burow vs. George Waller in this race. Scott is the incumbent in this
position by a short time, and has not as yet distinguished himself. George Waller was a Board
member a long time ago and failed to distinguish himself during his short tenure. Neither of these
guys bothered to put up a campaign page. George, who is also tight with the usual suspects and
holds pretty much all the same opinions, is a status quo vote. Scott seems reasonably nice,
although at this time he's pretty much a cypher.

NE/NC LC: There's a big field for this race. Katy Hestand was recently cheated out of a fair race
for ARGenWeb's SC, and it would be interesting indeed to see her, Betsy Mills, and Linda
Davenport serving on the same Board. She seems a little vitriolic in her public posts though, so
she might not promote much collegiality on the Board. Maureen Mead we barely know. She's
been around a long time, and has stayed under the radar, which means she's probably nice. Bill
Oliver is definitely nice. He's been a Board member before, but we don't think he's ever completed
a term. Jeffrey Scism we're not sure would manage to get along with anyone on the Board no
matter who else is elected. He definitely has some bold ideas for the Project, but appears to have
little ability to listen to anyone whose ideas differ from his own. As a lowly LC rep, he'd have little
to no influence on the Board and we're not sure how well or how long he'd tolerate that. Last but
not least is Bob Sweeney. We know Bob not at all. He recently served on the BRC and from all
reports was like a terrier on certain issues, particularly those of copyright and incorporation. He
makes fabulous webpages, and appears to be quite personally accomplished IRL. We think he
sounds nice [and boy, does he have pretty eyes! Swoon...].

NW/PL SC: The only candidate we are familiar with in this race is Sundee Maynez, one of, you
guessed it, the usual suspects. She generally follows them around like a lap dog, and its our guess
that she'd be a safe bet for the status quo. Jan Bony is the SC of ORGenWeb, and since W. David
Samuelsen is her ASC, she must absolutely have the patience of a saint and the toleration for
punishment of Job. Its likely she'd be a feisty Board member, and maybe nice. Jason Mendenhall is
entirely unknown to us. We haven't seen him on any lists, and he hasn't put up a candidate's page.
Sometimes its ok to give the dark horse a chance, but sometimes its not. It's your call.

NW/PL LC: Karen De Groote-Johnson is the dark horse in this race, but she put up a nice
campaign page. She probably won't be any worse than her status quo opponent, Gail Meyer
Kilgore, who has managed to remain entirely undistinguished in her several years on the Board,
and she might be a substantial improvement. So she could be worth taking a chance on.

SEMA CC: There's not a lot to pick from here. Ellen Pack is first on the list, and she's the
Establishment candidate. She's been on the Board before, served as Chair of the EC for a term,
and is very much a status quo vote [you notice there's one of those in pretty much all the races?]
She's generally Not Very Nice, but at least she's honest about it, since she's one of the few Board
members who will gladly slam someone in public as soon as she'd slam them in Sekrit. The EC
flexed the eligibility rules a bit to qualify her for this position; she's actually been a CC for only a
few months. She's been an SC for years but there wasn't an open SC seat in SEMA this time
around. We don't know Suzanne Sheppard at all, but we find it very interesting that her campaign
page looks very similar to that of NC Candidate Sherri Hall. Mollie Simpson did not provide a
campaign page and we are unfamiliar with her. Fred Smoot we know very well indeed. He is a
long time USGenWeb member, who was most likely cheated out of the NC seat a few years back.
He's had endless run-ins with the Establishment and greatly enjoys tweaking them at every
opportunity. He is hugely outspoken and rabidly anti-Archives. Fred most likely wants the seat so
he can cause trouble with it. This will be highly entertaining and may actually benefit the Project.
The final candidate, Sharon Tabor, has been embroiled in the recent fracas in KYGenWeb, and
appears to have become politically active because of what she's witnessed in that beleagured state.
She has a reasonably impressive resume, within and outside of USGenWeb, and despite some
difficulties with the finer points of email etiquette and a tendency to fly off the handle with
incorrect information, she might be the best choice of the bunch.

SW/SC LC: Saving the best for last, we are actually pleased to report that no matter who wins
this race, the CCs of the SW/SC region will not lose. Alice Allen is up first. Alice has been around
a long time, quiet but dedicated. Although she's not been politically active, we've had the pleasure
of watching her work for several years now and she is always sensible and focused. She seems to
remain on a very even keel through the roughest storms and the storms of late have really been
doozies. She is nice to everyone; we have never seen her respond in anger to anyone even when
she is quite clearly angry. Trey Holt is next on the list. He's been around forever and served on the
Board in the distant past. He was TXGW SC for a long time. Although we will admit that we
have never much liked Trey and he is tight with some pretty toxic people, we find lately that he
has expressed some very reasonable opinions that [as much as it pains us to admit] we find
ourselves agreeing with. He's possibly the status quo vote in this race, but maybe not. The more
likely status quo vote is Bettie Woods. Although Bettie initially seemed to be little more than a
Board tool against Tim Stowell, she seems to have really grown into her position as CC rep. She
is quite possibly the only current Board member who not only asks her constituents what they
want, but who also votes according to their stated wishes. She encourages discussion on the
regional list and manages the list with a very light touch. Although she sometimes seems clueless
about things that ought to be crystal clear, she has some grit to her. Above all, she has sense of
humor; she posted an absolutely hilarious picture on her campaign page.

There you have it. Vote early and vote often. Happy Election Season, everyone!

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Rolling the dice since 1998