From merope@Radix.Net Mon Jun 25 12:45:09 2001 Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 12:45:08 -0400 (EDT) From: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 6/25/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Dancing like no one's watching...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Saturday 23 June 2001: Sundee Maynez publishes an update of current Board business. Sunday 24 June 2001: Richard publishes a series of responses to questions regarding Query Express and Motion 01-23. He notes that QE's intimidating sign-up page is one reason why GenConnect was succesful and QE was and thinks Joy Fisher's "express lane" version is an excellent idea. He also supports Joy for the chair of the proposed committee. He also likes Teri Pettis's idea for an indexed query system and notes "by making the system particularly simple and attractive a large number of them would participate--even more than signed up with GenCOnnect--because this would be our own query system." In a response to Maggie Stewart, he points that no one has mentioned forcing CCs to use any particular system and thinks that by implementing a simple, easy-to-use indexed system, they could persuade a large percentage of CCs to use it, which would "enhance our image as a stand-alone project." He also notes "No matter how quickly the bugs get worked out of the Ancestry.com system or how good the system is when it is truly up and running, it is still the Ancestry system and not the USGenWeb system. For the sake of the identity of our project, we need our own system for this vital function on our county sites." Monday 25 June 2001: Richard congratulates Don Kelly on becoming the new IAGenWeb Assistant State Coordinator. === "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." ---Dr. Who This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Tue Jun 26 14:36:04 2001 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 14:36:03 -0400 (EDT) From: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Message board Solutions & More Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Status: O X-Status: The following is being sent as a Public Service Announcement. The DBS doesn't know any more about it than you do and does not endorse it. But we thought you'd like to know about the option. -Teresa merope@radix.net =3D=3D=3D This may be copied and placed anywhere and is free for all to view includin= g=20 but not limited to web pages, newspapers, mail lists, snail mail, and any= =20 form of print distribution.=20 A group of former GenConnect message board administrators, and USGenWeb=20 county coordinators are getting together to offer a new service. This will = be=20 an alternative to using the new Rootsweb message board system, and it shoul= d=20 be available within a couple of weeks or so. =A0The goal is to create somet= hing=20 similar to the old GenConnect message boards, and probably better. =A0This= =20 alternative service plans to offer the following features: a. =A0Server space and message boards b. =A0It will be FREE c. =A0It will be fully searchable d. =A0There will be no registration required for posting or reading message= s e. =A0The political atmosphere found elsewhere will not be tolerated f. =A0 The user will ALWAYS own his/her own posts g. =A0=A0User contributions will be gladly accepted, but not required h. =A0There will be a distinct absence of nonsensical corporate mentality There was a great sense of loss in the genealogical community when RootsWeb= =20 was acquired by Ancestry. =A0That sense of loss has been compounded with th= e=20 changes during the past few days involving RootsWeb, Ancestry, and=20 MyFamily.com, Inc. The recent decision to combine and replace the GenConnect message boards on= =20 Rootsweb.com and the FamilyHistory.com message boards into a new message=20 board system has generated a great deal of confusion and dissatisfaction.= =20 =A0Concerns with this changeover include, but are not limited to the follow= ing: 1. =A0=A0=A0The following copyright notice was placed on the new board syst= em, and=20 displayed any time that a user attempted to print out a posted message: =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A9 Copyright 1996-2001, MyFamily.com, Inc. =A0All rig= hts reserved. =A0This=20 material is for personal use only. =A0Republication and redissemination,=20 including posting to news groups, is expressly prohibited without the prior= =20 written consent of MyFamily.com, Inc. Members of the RootsWeb Message Board Team subsequently stated that this=20 copyright notice was an error, and it no longer appears on the messages.=20 =A0Copyright concerns still exist since the following notice appears on the= =20 bottom of every board page: Copyright= =A9 1998-2001 MyFamily.com, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All rights=20 reserved. A review of the policies as currently posted for each entity, i.e. RootsWeb= ,=20 MyFamily.com, and Ancestry indicate that policies can be changed at any tim= e=20 without notice to the user or subscriber. =A0This should be of great concer= n to=20 every user or subscriber. 2. =A0=A0=A0The conversion was accomplished without adequate notice to boar= d=20 administrators as is evidenced by the hundreds of email messages that have= =20 been posted to the BOARDS-A= DMINS-L@rootsweb.com mailing list over the past=20 few days. =A0 3. =A0=A0=A0It appears that the new message board functions were not fully = and=20 adequately tested prior to their deployment. =A0It also appears that there = were=20 inadequate instructions and no help files available to assist the board=20 administrators during this critical time. 4. =A0=A0=A0The answers to questions asked by board administrators have bee= n=20 inadequately answered. 5. =A0=A0=A0The upper management personnel at MyFamily.com, Inc. have been= =20 unavailable to respond to the board administrators and users during this=20 chaotic situation. 6. =A0=A0=A0In at least one instance, a Rootsweb staff member suggested tha= t if a=20 board administrator was so disheartened by all of this that she give up her= =20 boards and setup wherever she would be happy. =A0This is certainly not a ve= ry=20 courteous response to a user expressing their concern about some=20 disappointing new policies. If you are interested in participating in this exciting FREE new service fo= r=20 genealogists, please reply via private email to arockef@home.com =A0You will=20 then be notified as soon as the service is online. You may certainly mainta= in=20 your present boards and sites, as well as having a site on the new service.= =20 =A0The choice is yours, and now you DO have a choice. =A0As genealogists, y= ou=20 deserve RESPECT for your efforts to preserve your family history. =3D=3D=3D From merope@Radix.Net Tue Jun 26 14:39:59 2001 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 14:39:58 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 6/26/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: First things first...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Monday 25 June 2001: Shari Handley posts a request she received from a CC "that the AB consider abolishing the requirement of CCs managing queries on their site(s)." She asks if the Board may discuss this idea without a motion at this time. Shari notes "As it stands now, the requirements for a county site are slim...To maintain a query page is the *only* ongoing task officially required of a CC, and I am loath to remove that. As a matter of fact, I am very much in favor of developing an in-house (USGenWeb) query system that would be as easy-to-use as the former GenConnect, and would be made available only to our CCs...each county site should have a query system that is administered by the CC." Richard Harrison supports Shari's ideas. Tim Stowell asks the Board to discuss this idea. George Waller feels "that the query page requirement adds superfluous work to CCs who could better spend their time doing other work for the county." His preference is to use the county mailing lists as a query system as it is indexed and available immediately. Holly Timm notes that "shell counties" would not change much regardless of what type of query system the project eventually supports or developes, and notes that "linking to existing busy query sites may be more advantageous to the researcher and free up time for the dedicated CC's to work on data." She reminds the Board that "The requirement was not set up to give CC's busy work or *proof of working* but because at that time there were not any major query sites where search engines etc home in on the names and places you want like GenConnect and GenForum etc do now." She suggest that perhaps it is time for the project to re-examine and update its requirements. Richard Harrison asks why USGW should tolerate "shell sites" at all and suggests that CCs that don't perform their job well should be replaced. He notes that "What has also changed is that now in order to post a query to RootsWeb.com, you must get an account with a commercial enterprise" and thinks it is time for the USGW to offer a non-commercial option. Richard asks George "Who controls you county mailing list...? Who decides when to change its formatting without regard to your needs. Who decides when to change it from a free list to a pay list? Who decides when to have the lists run by staff instead of by volunteers?" He notes that "Until we have a USGenWeb owned and operated query system, we will be at the mercy of the decisions based on other people's needs and not on the needs of our CCs and visitors." Tuesday 26 June 2001: Diane Parsons finds the new message boards to be "confusing and irritating." She feels that "query boards are necessary tools for all CC 's to have at their disposal and these CC 's have a right to monitor these boards in order to provide easy accessible query systems for the people who wish to use them." She would like to see a new query system operated by USGW that would be administered by the CCs. George points out that he is merely stating his own preference to use mailing lists for collecting queries and notes "Work is superfluous if it can be done more efficiently elsewhere." === Whats the Buzz Corner: The latest disturbing incident in the ongoing message board crisis is a message that's been making the rounds for the last day or so. A message board user forwarded a copy of the relevant portion of Ancestry's AUP for the message boards to MyFamily's help desk and asked "I would like clarification on this copyright law. Does this mean you think you "own" the postings made to the MyFamily.inc sites?" The reply from the help desk [specifically from "Dave"] was succint: "yes, we do." This has caused some concern among users of the message boards, especially those that noticed the copyright message that originally appeared attached to the "printable" version of each post: "Copyright 1996-2001, MyFamily.com, Inc. All rights reserved. This material is for personal use only. Republication and redissemination, including posting to news groups, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of MyFamily.com, Inc." After extensive protest, this copyright notice has been removed from the posts themselves. However, I have not seen a definitive statement from anyone at Root$web that "Dave" was mistaken in his statement [although I may have missed it--I have heard that various Root$web employees have been disavowing his words on various mailing lists]. Regardless, the "misunderstanding" is just one more example of the cavalier [or "flippant" as one poster put it"] attitude of Root$web's sugar daddy toward its loyal users. We have heard many reports of users who have just decided not to claim their boards, many who have given them up, and others who are moving off Root$web entirely, webpages and all, since they fear they have seen the writing on the wall. Perhaps this has something to do with the apparent tendency of Root$web and Ancestry both to put their least-informed and most attitudinally challenged staff members on the help desk, but that is only speculation. If At First You Don't Succeed Corner: A little bird slipped this under my door yesterday, but I didn't write about it because, frankly, the source was a little iffy. But its been confirmed by someone who really ought to know what they are talking about. It appears that RW's mailing lists are about to go the way of the message boards, at least as far as the searchable archives go. The archives will be moved to an Ancestry address and there will be a new search engine that will search all lists. The setup will be similar to the new, much-loved message board setup. So we all have something to look forward to. We imagine merging of Root$web's version of the SSDI and its WorldConnect Project with Ancestry's versions are in the not too distant future as well. === "A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents." ---Melvin R. Laird This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. From merope@Radix.Net Wed Jun 27 13:25:55 2001 Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 13:25:54 -0400 (EDT) From: merope Reply-To: merope To: Daily Board Show Subject: Daily Board Show, 6/27/2001 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: If its good for Ancestry, its good for USGenWeb...its Your Daily Board Show! *warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk! Wednesday 27 June 2001: Lorraine Newsome says she is unhappy with the new boards and notes the "Bad pre-release press, lousy instructions, and lots of glitches so far." She notes however that any committee formed that will find out CCs' opinions and explore available options before any decision is made. Barbara Dore points out that although the bylaws mandate that CCs maintain "an easily accessible area devoted to researcher's queries", they are not specific as to how this should be done. Her opinion is that "if a CC has a "area devoted to researcher's queries" then that CC has fulfilled that part of the verbal contract agreed to when taking on the county sponsorship...I see no reason to worry too much if the compilation of those queries don't "belong" to [under the control of] the project or individual CC's." Holly Timm points out that the guidelines for local coordinators do require that a CC maintain their own queries and notes that "language that would need changing although it would not require a bylaws amendment to do so." Ken Short agrees with Shari Handley's statements and thinks also that "we should develop our own USGW system whether it is Query Express or something completely new." === Taking Care of Business Corner: The DBS will most likely not be published tomorrow or Friday. We have been called away on an emergency that involves sand, sun and surf. === "Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." ----Jorge Luis Borges This has been your Daily Board Show. -Teresa Lindquist merope@radix.net ------- Daily Board Show, (c) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved.