MAY 2006 DBS

Monday, May 29, 2006
Push Comes To Shove

You might as well face it...its Your Daily Board Show!

EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR: After yet another Board member requested a ruling on the actual repercussions of the wording of Motion 06-10 ['twas Larry Flesher this time], NC Linda declared the motion out of order, noting:

"Motion 06-10 made by Jeff and 2nd by Karen...is therefore Out of Order for the following reasons: (1) The motion uses the word accept when the intent of the committee is to have its recommendations adopted as the Project's official guidelines in any case of suspected Fraudulent Registration, and, (2) The motion was not made by the committee chair."

and further:

"Any motion declared Out of Order becomes null and void and requires no further action...Since the committee's recommendations were received by the NC from the committee chair, with this posting of the committee's recommendations the recommendations are considered to have been read. Under Strugis the committee chair is required to move the motion for the acceptance and adoption of the committee's report/procedures."

She then asked George, as the chair of the committee if he would move to accept the provisions of the Voter Fraud Committee's report. Thus far, he has not done so.

CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE: In response to Cyndie's now days old question about the correct procedure to get the proposed bylaws revisions on the ballot, NC Linda had this to say:

"Strugis says that any bylaws revision must follow the same procedures as the set before it...Under the procedures used for the existing set of bylaws it is the NC who submits the revision to a vote of the membership...June 1 was the committee's target date to have a revision completed, presented to the membership for discussion and any corrections or changes made in time for the bylaws revision to be presented to the membership for vote during the annual election. Although the procedures for presenting the bylaws to the membership for a vote does not require the bylaws revision be presented during the annual election, I leave office Aug 31st and if the bylaws revision is not presented before then it will be up to the next NC to decide whether or not to present this bylaws revision, or any bylaws revision, to the membership for vote."

And with that, the matter of bylaws revisions pretty much became The Linda Show.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
On the sidelines since 1998

Posted by merope at 7:05 PM 1 comments    

Sunday, May 28, 2006
Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Now with soy ink...its Your Daily Board Show!

RTFM, PART DEUX: The Board basically had two conversations going on yesterday, both publicly and in the Sekrit Sandbox. One involved Motion 06-10 and the other involved the bylaws revisions committee's report, but both were graced with Jeff "Never Met 1000 Words He Didn't Like" Scism pontificating at length about things he was apparently making up as he went along.

On the Motion 06-10 front, Phyllis started the show off by asking for a formal ruling on the question of whether by voting to "accept" the Voter Fraud Committee report, they are in essence voting to "adopt" its provisions as policy. Bettie quoted Sturgis, which pretty clearly treats "adopt" and "accept" as synonymous, [You kids at home can follow on pages 185-190], and which also notes that adopting a report that contains recommendations has the effect of making those recommendations binding on the organization. Jeff, who apparently prefers writing over reading, still claimed that "Acceptance is an acknowledgment that the report has been submitted, adopting it indicates that you are implementing it." Bettie correctly identified this as "bunk" and joined Phyllis in requesting a formal ruling. This provoked Jeff to cite Sturgis on "reference committees", which have to do with conventions and are not relevant to this discussion [and in any case, the section he cites does not support his position], and to continue to claim a difference between "adopting" and "accepting" a motion. In his next post, however, he asked leave to withdraw Motion 06-10 and eventually he formally apologized for the confusion caused by his continued insistence on incorrect wording. Bettie then suggested, that in order to make the motion perfectly clear, "It should...be stated as you suggested on exec list." [Why this already public motion is being discussed in the Sekrit Sandbox is not clear.]

[Something we've been wondering about for a day or so now is why this distinction actually matters to the Board at this time. The report has been on the Board's desk for some weeks, it's gone back to committee for revision a couple of times, and through all that, the Board has shown little inclination to even discuss the report, much less make any changes to it. So why are they now all concerned that they might accidentally vote to implement it? If they are happy with the report as is and want to make it Project policy, they should just do so. If they aren't happy with it and want to change it, they should commence to serious discussion of the changes they want made and direct the committee to make those revisions before they proceed to adopting it. If they aren't happy with it and don't want to change it, they should just file it and move on. Time's a wastin'.]

The second discussion involved the bylaws revisions committee's report and also concerned an incorrect interpretation of Sturgis [although "interpretation" is a loose word, since you can't interpret something you've apparently never read]. After we pointed out that Jeff really has no authority to make unilateral changes to a submitted committee report, Jeff noted: "The final version will be presented in a motion to the Board for their acceptance. At that time changes will be locked out...As chair of the Committee, I feel it is my responsibility to make the decision of calling committee conference if a change necessitates it. If I make a change to the revision, which the committee members disagree with, one will be held and the majority or consensus, will decide." Then he suggested it was "bad form" to take him to task for violating correct parliamentary procedure when the changes he made were in response to some of our observations. [The fact that he took a conversation on a public list to one of the Board's lists where we cannot respond apparently constitutes "good form."]

Sturgis clearly states that only the committee can make changes to a submitted report and makes no distinction between draft, interim, or final reports. Because this proposal was submitted under the heading "Bylaws revision proposal report," we would think that pretty much makes it a report. Jeff, however, seems to think 1) that because he's communicating with the committee and making changes that Project members have suggested, that's somehow not a violation of Sturgis; and 2) that the report isn't really a report, it's just an "opportunity" for the membership to comment. In a private email to us, Jeff continued to claim that "The report is not formally submitted until it is presented on Board-L as a motion to accept," but since by this point it was becoming increasingly clear that he was talking out his a...er, hat, neither of us pursued the issue further.

Last, but not least, Jan Cortez noted, "I am seeing alot of holes in this and think that this committee needs to take it back with the many comments and correct and simplify it. Kind of a short and sweet version, that affords some protections for the Volunteers of this project. One of the things that I don't like is the continued over representation of the SC's. I know many will probably want my head for this, but, I think one SC Rep is sufficient."

Hear, hear. One could drive a Hummer [and not that silly yuppie Hummer either] through some of the holes in this thing, and most of them are too big for Jeff "Le comité, c'est moi" Scism to fix alone.

BONUS QUOTE: "It is bad form to complain that something is wrong, and then complain when people agree with you, and act to correct them." --Jeff Scism

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Throwing out the bathwater with the baby since 1998

Posted by merope at 7:30 AM 1 comments    

Saturday, May 27, 2006
The Know-Nothing Party

Head in the sand...its Your Daily Board Show

RTFM: Another handful of Board members have indicated they aren't interested in discussing Motion 06-10 [to "accept" the Voter Fraud Committee report]. This brings us up to 10 members that have declined the opportunity to further discuss the report. Bettie took it to her regional list for discussion, and among the comments was one from Phyllis wondering just what would happen if the Board voted to "accept" the motion. This raised an interesting point. Although Jeff has stated previously that "'accept' leaves room for working on it," a quick glance at Sturgis indicates that might not be so. According to that august tome, if a committee's recommendations are included in the body of its report, as they are in this one, and the report is approved, those recommendations become binding on the organization. This may change things a bit, since most of the Board members seem to think that voting to "accept" the report is somehow different from "adopting" it. But who knows? Maybe they intended to "accept" the report and tell us later, "whoops, we messed up. Guess that silly old thing is now law. Our bad."

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE: NC Linda has notified Fred Smoot that he's not qualified for the vacant SEMA SC rep seat since he took his ASC office on July 1 of last year. Several people have already pointed out that the bylaws refer only to nominees in elections and that the parliamentarian has already noted that the Board, under the bylaws, is free to appoint whomever it chooses to a vacant seat. A couple have noted that Fred's rival for the seat, Heather de George, has also not been an SC for a full year, but we think she may have been an ASC for some time before that. If she hasn't, we think NC Linda will probably tell the Board there are no qualified candidates and leave the seat vacant for the next three months.

BLAME CANADA: So, we now have a bylaws revision proposal in front of the Board. Thus far, only one Board member other than Jeff has discussed it on the open list, and that was someone asking what the correct procedures would be in relation to getting the revisions on the ballot. There has been a smattering of comment on some other lists, mostly pertaining to the gross over-representation of the SCs on the Board.

The problem with just about everything Jeff does is that he appears to equate verbiage with substance. Case in point, the current bylaws fill 9 pages on my monitor; Jeff's version takes 19 clicks to get to the bottom, and that doesn't take into account the page of intro at the top. In all those words, is there really anything new, different, or profoundly beneficial to the membership over and above the current bylaws? Sadly, it appears not. Most of it is gobbledy-gook that just complicates and ossifies current practice or lards on meaningless detail. For instance, the proposal spends about a page of text codifying when, where, and how the Board may hold its various meetings and all it basically says is that the Board may hold its meetings just exactly like they are doing now. It also, for no readily apparent reason, designates the September meeting as the "annual meeting." We could go on like this, but suffice to say the committee apparently decided to pass on the opportunity to actually change much. As an added bonus, the wording in much of the document is so complicated that if it adopted it should provide fodder for those who make sport of bylaws interpretations for years to come.

There are a few things that just leap out at one for their bizarreness. Among other things, the "new and improved" bylaws do this:

1. Retain the 2:1 CC/SC ratio on the Board. Many, many people have noted over the years that there are about 25 SC/ASCs to every SC rep on the Board, but there are on the order of hundreds of members to each CC rep. Additionally, the 2:1 ratio in no way reflects the distribution of SCs and CCs in the membership at large. Adding more regions will only make this difference more marked. So there's no compelling reason to keep it, other than its how its always been. We've felt for some time that regional representation is meaningless in the context of this project and that representatives ought to be elected by all project members based on their position in the Project, but we've given up hope that will ever be seriously considered.

2. Retain the the requirement that the Board set the regions each and every year. This requirement is in the current bylaws and its never been implemented, so we are not sure why it was kept in the proposal. It's profoundly silly and should the Board decide to actually implement it every year, we can only imagine the havoc it would wreak on the elections and on current and future representative terms. But Jeff apparently wants to split his region into two parts and the redistricting option has personal value to him, thus it stayed.

[We'll also note incidentally that Jeff has been making unilateral changes, some quite substantive, to the supposed committee report. He has for instance modified the proposal to say the Board "may" redistrict each year, instead of having to redistict each year. According to Sturgis, only a committee can change a report once it has been submitted, and as far as we know there are more people than just Jeff on the committee.]

3. Change the quorum to a majority of members voting on a motion. The wording of this provision is somewhat obtuse to us, but we think it means that if there are 12 seated Board members [presumably not counting the NC], 7 of them need to vote in order for a quorum to be met. If there are lot of vacancies, and say we only have nine seated Board members, 5 of them need to vote for a quorum to be met. Trivially, this means that the Board could get down to one member before it has to cease operations due to lack of a quorum, although we supposed that one person could just continue to make motions and vote on them, since they'd always have 100% attendance.

4. Institute a new "process" for becoming a member. Nowadays, if you want to become a member, you just work it out with your SC. Under the new proposal, you aren't a member until you meet four conditions, one of which is notification of the EC. This apparently will mean that your right to vote and your eligibility to hold office won't start until the EC knows about you, regardless of when your SC actually gave you the county or when you started work on it. It also requires CCs to get their SC's approval before they add co-CCs or ACCs. This is just make-work bureaucracy for everyone involved.

[The whole membership section is just confusing beyond description. According to the document, only the member or "the Project" can terminate someone's membership, but then it goes on to basically give SCs carte blanch, same as now, in determining who gets to be a member. So it's not at all clear that if your SC fires you from your only county whether your membership in USGenWeb ceases at that point or not. If you continue as a member, what effect would that have on your voting and other rights? How can you not continue as a member, since the SC has no authority to terminate your membership? Will "the Project" then step in and formally terminate your membership? Or can this provision be interpreted to mean that the SCs are "the Project" in this respect? The clearest reading we can come up with is that basically, despite the extra hoops to jump through, your right to membership will still rest entirely with the SCs.]

5. Attempt to force states to adopt their own bylaws and procedures, lest they be forced to follow the Board's "default rules." Now, these default rules don't exist and may never exist, and there's no clear indication of what would happen if a grievance occurred in a state that has no rules and the Board has not yet managed to make its own rules. Apparently, however, these phantom default rules will be so onerous that states [or perhaps the SCs themselves] will be encouraged to avoid them by instituting any old policy. We don't really see where its the Board's business to force states to adopt policies by threatening them with national level policies, but its more or less a moot point since the Board would still have to be willing to enforce state level policies when an SC decides the rules don't apply to their exalted self. As we've seen, that's not likely to happen. We aren't even sure the Board would be able to enforce its own policies should an SC thumb their nose at them again.

6. Change the non-discrimination policy. For some reason, marital status and disability were removed from the list of things that membership can't be denied for. Is discriminating against polygamous amputees now OK?

7. Enumerate a whole series of mostly paper rights for members. For instance, members would have a right to submit motions, but only if their representative agrees to do it. The Board gets the right to spam your inbox under the guise of your right to receive "notices." You can attend a meeting, but can't participate anywhere but through your representatives or via public discussion forums [which Board members aren't actually required to join]. You can insist on enforcement of the rules until you're blue in the face, if you like. And you are also free to resign. [This is exceedingly mportant. We will have no slaves in USGenWeb. Sheesh.] You have the right to a "fair hearing", which goes conspicuously undefined, although your right to a representative in said "fair hearing" is confirmed. There's more, fourteen rights exactly, but we are, to say the least, underwhelmed.

We would go on to discuss the several pages of rules for committees, referenda, elections, copyright, and bylaws revisions [in which the Board gets to play a huge part], which constitute the remainder of this bloated embarrasment, but frankly, all the words are making our little heads hurt. Perhaps we live in a rich fantasy world, but we just cannot give up hope that somewhere out there in the vast pool of talent that makes up USGenWeb there is a group of people that are capable of sitting down together and coming up with bylaws that are simple, understandable, concise, and sensible, and which recognize an exceedingly simple truth about this Project: people are here to do genealogy and they don't want more rules or more complicated versions of the rules we already have. 20 pages of arcane rules do not improve anyone's situation.

That whooshing sound you just heard? It was the sound of another lost opportunity winging by.

BONUS QUOTE: "It is member focused, board enabled, SC balanced." -Jeff Scism

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
A keen sense of disappointment since 1998

Posted by merope at 8:30 AM 0 comments    

Friday, May 26, 2006
PSA

No real DBS this morning folks, local emergency.

However, to recap, nothing much has happened with the new motion except that several Board members have declined to discuss it. NC Linda has found her loophole to exclude Fred Smoot from appointment to the vacant seat; problem is, her Parliamentarian has already pointed out that the bylaws make no reference to the requirements for actually serving, only to candidates in elections. And last but not least, NC Linda's pet bylaws revisions committee has posted its recommended new bylaws in order to get them on the ballot in the upcoming election. On a quick pass, they look pretty much like the rush job they were; we are sure that on closer read they will collapse into incoherency. They are here: http://www.rootsweb.com/~inmontgo/bylaws/. Read 'em and weep.

-Teresa
rushing off

Posted by merope at 5:55 AM 1 comments    

Thursday, May 25, 2006
Mighty Like A Whale

The devil in the details...its Your Daily Board Show!

WIGGLE ROOM: After acting Chair Scott Burow combined Jeff's two versions of the VFC motion and numbered it, Phyllis wondered whether the motion was to "accept" or "adopt" the proposed report. Jeff originally moved to "accept" the report and then changed it to "adopt" the report as written. After Jeff clarified that he intends the Board to "accept" the report, since that "leaves room for working on it" [something the Board has shown no interest in doing], Scott asked him to withdraw the motion entirely and resubmit it. Jeff did so and Karen again provided the second.

WEARING TWO HATS: Incidentally, Scott is also the sole remaining chair of the Grievance Procedures Committee and also apparently its only remaining member. He occasionally posts a revision to its draft procedures document for discussion, but no one else on the committee ever says anything. The GPC report is now two months overdue and the committee seems to have mostly lost interest in it, but Scott at least is still plugging away. The original GPC proposal [left column] and Scott's current amendments [right column] are here, if anyone is still interested in this topic.

http://ilgenweb.rootsweb.com/GPC/usgwgcp.html

He is working on section 6 now, and it appears that sections 5E and 5F haven't yet been updated to reflect his changes, but the rest of the document is current.

IF WISHES WERE HORSES: As luck would have it, NC Linda was able to scare up at least one other person to run against Fred Smoot for the vacant SEMA SC rep seat. We'll just go out on a limb and welcome former Board member Heather de George back to the fold now and save time doing it later. She apparently wasn't overly interested in the seat back when NC Linda first trolled for volunteers on the SC list a week ago, but suddenly found a compelling reason to throw her hat in the ring. Go figure.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
News to use since 1998

Posted by merope at 5:50 AM 1 comments    

Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Clear As Mud

Careful what you wish for...its Your Daily Board Show!

SIX OF ONE: Jeff Scism, who's never met a CC-smackin' idea he didn't like, moved that "the Voter fraud Committee report be accepted as submitted. Karen seconded the motion, but before NC Linda could get the vote going, Scott asked Jeff to clarify just which version of the VFC report he was moving to accept [there have been three so far]. Jeff then rephrased the motion for clarity and included the version of the report that he is proposing the Board impose on the project. [Which version they accept is actually pretty irrelevant. All of them leave the CCs open to vindictive anonymous accusations with no guarantee of a fair hearing.]

PIG IN A POKE: Word has it that NC Linda has finally been succesful in scaring up a volunteer for the vacant SEMA SC rep seat. Problem is that volunteer is Fred Smoot and Linda is frantically trying to convince literally anyone else in the region to stand against him. If she's not succesful, the Board has an interesting dilemna ahead of it. On the one hand, they've gone very public with their interpretation that the bylaws require them to fill the vacant seat. On the other hand, serving with Fred for even three months would be an onerous chore for most of them and one they would very much like to avoid. But if the bylaws require them to fill the seat and they have but one qualified candidate, then we don't see how they can deny that candidate the seat no matter who he is or how great their personal distaste.

We imagine that Linda will manage to convince someone else to stand for the seat, and if she doesn't, she'll drag out the appointment process as long as humanly possible in order to minimize the amount of time Fred spends on the Board.

INTO THE SUNSET: We are sad to report that very long-time NMGenWeb member Charles Barnum has finally been canned by SC Karen Mitchell. The reason apparently is that Charles privately told another member of the list that he was tired of the public slander against him and he was consulting with an attorney about how he could get it stopped. Neither Karen nor any other NMGW SC has ever made the slightest attempt to prevent NMGW members from attacking Charles on the state's list; members of that state have likened him to the 9/11 terrorists and accused him of causing former SC Leon Moya's heart attack and driving him from NMGW. Charles is a prolific transcriber and from all accounts a diligent CC, but NMGW has no formal rules in place to protect CCs from SCs who get fed up to here with any particular volunteer for any particular reason and Karen is free to fire anyone for any reason that takes her fancy. Or for no reason at all. [It wouldn't matter if they did, of course, because the OHGW fiasco showed how little those rules matter in the long run.]

Anywhoo, following his unceremonious and so far not publicly announced removal from NMGenWeb, Charles resigned all his remaining positions in USGenWeb. We would imagine there is much rejoicing in the Sekrit Sandbox, since one more of the "difficult people" has finally been done away with, for nothing more than being difficult.

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

Posted by merope at 6:10 AM 0 comments    

Monday, May 22, 2006
Business As Usual

Better read than dead...its Your Daily Board Show!

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS: After several days of silence, NC Linda popped on to let the Board members, and apparently the rest of us, know that she'd posted a message to the SC list trying to find a volunteer for the vacant seat and was met with a resounding lack of interest. She also noted that she'd sent personal notes to every SC and ASC in the region trying to scare up someone who would sit in the seat for the next three months. For those of you who are wondering why the NC would be soliciting volunteers when 8 Board members [9 if you count Jeff] recommended leaving the seat vacant, it turns out that someone privately reminded the Board that the bylaws require them to appoint someone regardless of how much time is remaining in the term. Not a word of this was breathed on the public list though, until people wondered publicly why the NC was apparently going around the Board's expressly stated consensus to ask for volunteers. When we read NC Linda's original inquiry on State-Coord-L we wondered why there was no outcry from the Board, but it turns out they'd already been discussing it in the Sekrit Sandbox, probably even while they were publicly voting to leave the seat empty.

Here's a timeline of this particular piece of Board business:

May 7: Angie resigns
May 8: NC Linda acknowledges the resignation
May 14: NC Linda asks the Board whether it wants to leave the seat vacant or appoint someone; Jeff says he'll go along with the majority
May 15: Larry says leave the seat vacant
May 16: Jan and Sundee say leave the seat vacant
May 17: Cyndie, Suzanne, Karen, Bettie, and George say leave the seat vacant
May 18: NC Linda solicits volunteers for the vacant seat on State-Coord-L
May 21: NC Linda notifies the Board that she posted the message but received no takers; Bettie finally posts a message that the NC's actions and the Board's apparent acquiescence to those actions stemmed from a private email citing chapter and verse of the bylaws

Once again, some minor inconsequential thing has been discussed on the sekrit list, decisions were made, and actions taken, all without the courtesy of any sort of public notice or participation until after the fact. No one on the Board seems to object to this and apparently some anonymous person writing them an email has more influence than a quorum of elected representatives.

Which reminds us that its been some months now since NC Linda published an "update" of items discussed in the Sekrit Sandbox. We've long since given up any hope that she'll actually do what she promised to do at the beginning of her term and let us know before they go into session what they'll be discussing.

TWIDDLING THEIR THUMBS: Noting that what little discussion there was has ceased, NC Linda asked for a motion to approve the Voter Fraud Committee's suggested procedures to handle suspected fraudulent voting registrations. So far, there's been no takers.

ITS HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP: In one of his periodic attempts to drum up business for his latest idea that someone else did first and better, Brian "Old News" Leverich got NC Linda to flog his giant list o' links on the USGenWeb project lists. It's about the same as it ever was, but we noted a couple of things with some small degree of amusement. 1) A person who routinely and publicly congratulates himself on his stature as a genealogist is prominently flogging something called "The House of Names." 2) All the links to Ancestry.con that say "Explore Ancestry for Free" are followed by a dollar sign.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Listening to the sounds of silence since 1998

Posted by merope at 6:20 AM 1 comments    

Thursday, May 18, 2006
Getting Greased

Just like magic, only better...its Your Daily Board Show!

ON THE BANDWAGON: Another five Board members have agreed that the vacant seat SEMA SC rep be left unfilled until next term. Or at least until the end of the nominations period; one of them suggested that they appoint the nominee to the position early, should only one person run for the office.

UNCEASING WONDER: We are pleased to report that the missing budget pages from "the entirely unofficial and not affiliated with anything having to do with USGenWeb" committee have miraculously resurfaced. The "donations" site in general is still quite the mess, with numerous typos, bad links, and dollar figures that don't match from one page to another, but at least the numbers on the actual budget pages appear to match up. Of course, no public or private response to a public inquiry about the missing pages was forthcoming from anyone, so we imagine that there are more than a few folks out there wondering about what passes for accountability. Or maybe not. The FGS 2006 Dog & Pony Show seems to have dropped off the radar of even the official newsletter, which came out a couple of days ago and makes no mention whatsoever of the conference.

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

Posted by merope at 5:55 AM 0 comments    

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
How The Other Half Lives

Vaudeville in a dark house...its Your Daily Board Show!

PULLING TEETH: In the couple of days since last we published two more Board members allowed as to how they think the vacant SEMA SC rep seat should be left vacant, given that time is pretty much running out on this session anyways. So, in the past three days, only three Board members have apparently given this issue much thought.

VANISHING ACT: A little bird tells us that the Budget and Monthly Report pages for the not-affiliated-with-anything-official "Support the USGenWeb Project at the FGS 2006 Conference" committee have disappeared from the website. The donation report still shows only the anonymous $185 donation they received way back in February, and the home page still shows the $310 "raised so far" figure it has shown for months. [Why those numbers don't match, we have no idea.] Gone completely are the nice month by month pages that showed all the income and the outgo of money given to the two committee members. We tried to write the address given on the page, but it sent us an autoresponded "sorry, I am moving to Boston and won't be able to answer your email until May 26" from Josh Taylor. The budget pages themselves were kept on Betsy Mills' personal webpages, but it's highly unlikely we'll get any sort of response from her.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Giving the once-over since 1998

Posted by merope at 6:00 AM 0 comments    

Monday, May 15, 2006
Already Working For The Weekend

Smarter than a bag of rocks...its Your Daily Board Show!

BLINKED AND MISSED IT: You know how sometimes you go away for days and while you are gone the stuff well and truly hits the fan and you come back to a discouraging pile of, well, stuff to wade through? Well, that didn't happen. In fact, we are thinking these days that we could go away for a month and come back and the Board would still be discussing the lame voter fraud report and the vacant [fill in the blank] seat. If this keeps up, we'll have to call this the Weekly BS.

Anyways, on with the show. While you were sleeping the Board had a couple of questions about the voter fraud report. They've apparently moved past pretending to be interested in the members' rights and are now focusing on the ill-defined Technical Advisor position [which a bird tells us will go to Joy Fisher once they vote on it]. The once and future TA will be a "standing" position [i.e., more or less permanent], could be a Board member, will not be subscribed to the Sekrit Sandbocks, but will work with the EC and be privy to sekrit eyes-only EC information.

In the matter of the vacant seat, NC Linda asked the Board members to indicate whether they want to appoint someone to represent the SCs of the SEMA region or let the seat sit empty for the remaining three months of this term. Larry suggested letting the RAL assume the duties of the position and leaving the seat vacant until the Septemper switchover. Taking a bold stand on a firm position, Jeff said he'd just go along with whatever the majority decides to do in regards to the vacant SEMA SC seat. No other Board members have expressed an opinion so far.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Nothing to see here since 1998

Posted by merope at 7:05 AM 1 comments    

Thursday, May 11, 2006
Less Than Zero

Just gibberish...its Your Daily Board Show!

NEW BS: Donna Allen was formally appointed to the position of Board Secretary. She will serve until August 31, 2006.

OUTTA DODGE: A couple of Board members notified their colleagues that they will be out of town and out of email contact for varying amounts of time. One of these is NC Linda. Scott Burow will be Acting National Coordinator in her absence.

ONE MORE TIME: Before she high-tailed it out of town, NC Linda posted the "final version" of the Voter Fraud Committee report to the formal list and once again opened it for discussion. Other than Phyllis "Minor Detail" Rippee wondering whether the proposed Technical Advisor would only be available for voter fraud cases, the Board was as unenthusiastic about this version as they were about the last two.

TECHNICAL NOTES: Several people have written me in the last day or so wondering why they either can't see the DBS at all or why they see all the style formatting code instead of the actual newsrag. All we can say is that it looks fine from our end and in all the cases we've dealt with switching browsers has resolved the issue. To make it more interesting, someone reported that switching from Firefox to IE fixed things right up, but someone else reported that switching from IE to Firefox or Opera did the trick. For what it's worth, we use the latest version of Firefox and haven't noticed any problems. We checked it on version 6.0 of IE and had no problems with that either.

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

Posted by merope at 5:45 AM 0 comments    

Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Chillin'

Fiddling while Rome burns...its Your Daily Board Show!

THIS 'N THAT: Not much has happened since the DBS last went to press. A couple more Board members had no objection to the appointment of Donna Allen to the Board secretary position. Ellen Pack's last set of minutes was published. And NC Linda noted Angie Rayfield's resignation and wished her well. And that's all folks!

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
A public service since 1998

Posted by merope at 5:50 AM 0 comments    

Monday, May 08, 2006
It's Alive

Nothing a shot of bourbon won't fix...its Your Daily Board Show!

IN WITH THE OLD, OUT WITH THE NEW: Shortly after the DBS went to press yesterday, NC Linda announced her selection for Board Secretary. The lucky winner is TXGenWeb CC Donna Allen, who has been trying for some time now to become a member of USGenWeb's political jetset. After a brief stint on the Election Committee and a failed run for a spot in the Sandbox itself, she now finds herself as the Board's secretary. Others have parlayed that thankless position into an eventual Board seat and we predict she'll do the same. Thus far, none of the Board members have objected to Linda's choice of scribe.

SAD SAYONARA: The big news, of course, is the resignation of Angie Rayfield. Citing personal reasons, Angie resigned from the Project in its entirety last night and of course has also left the Board. Angie's resignation also leaves a hole on the Grievance Procedures Committee, where she has served for some months as co-chair with Scott Burow. Her resignation leaves another vacuum the Board will need to fill, although since we are now a bare two months away from an election and only four months from the switchover to the new Board, they may well decide to leave the seat empty. From the members' perspective, this may be the best of a bad situation, since when the Board replenishes its own ranks, the results are sometimes a wee bit spotty [as evidenced by the recent fiasco with the vacant RAL and SWSC seats].

We've had our differences with Angie in the past, but in recent times she has become one of the strongest advocates for the CC the Board has ever had. A couple of her colleagues tell us that she has been instrumental in focusing and organizing the others on the Board who support the CCs and challenge the tired "spare the rod, spoil the child" philosophy that the Board usually operates under. We here in the newbunker are indeed sorry to see her go and wish her well.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
The devil you know since 1998

Posted by merope at 6:10 AM 1 comments    

Sunday, May 07, 2006
Early Check-in

Signifying nothing...its Your Daily Board Show!

FALSE ALARM: With the belated adjournment of the April meeting, the delayed opening of the May meeting, and the timely announcement that the April minutes had been sent to the webmaster for publication a couple of days ago, we thought the Board might have been kicking itself back into gear. But we were wrong. Other than an announcement by Darilee that WashingtonGenWeb is about to elect itself a new SC, there's been no other activity on the Board list.

-Teresa Lindquist
Editor & Publisher, Daily Board Show
Going back to sleep since 1998

Posted by merope at 6:28 AM 0 comments    

Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Where's Waldo?

Whole lotta nuthin'...its Your Daily Board Show!

JUST CHECKING IN: The Board has been publicly inactive for going on five days now. Even George and Phyllis have appeared to have gone off to stroke each other in private. It's a new month, so we expect that NC Linda will at least go through the motions of adjourning the April meeting and posting the agenda, and she might even call for a motion to accept the Voter Fraud Committee report that few of them could be bothered to discuss. But maybe not. In any case, a deep case of the torpors have seem to set in and where the Board is concerned, that can only be a good thing.

So, go out and enjoy the fabulous spring. There really is nothing to see here.

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

Posted by merope at 5:42 AM 0 comments