Aug 16-22 1999

From merope@Radix.Net Mon Aug 16 21:02:30 1999

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 21:02:29 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Ain't nothin' like it...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Lucky Friday 13 August 1999:

There is no Board-L traffic on this date.

Saturday 14 August 1999:

Pam Reid forwards to the Board list a very nice thank you message she

received from a USGW visitor. The message reads, "Thank you for providing

information that puts a smile on my face, gratitude in my heart and an

ancestors name in my records."

Election Update: Election Committee Chair Jim Powell has announced that

the EC will try to have the election results tallied and reported to the

Project by 10pm EDT Thursday night.

It appears that NC Candidate Fred Smoot's Campaign Committee has emailed

CC's in most states asking for support of their candidate. According to a

source who asked to remain anonymous, "We now have over 60 CC's on the

Campaign Committee, and represent over 40 states. Between us all, over

1,900 CC's have been contacted so far " [The message sent out was

essentially the same as was distributed through the DBS last evening.]

Flotsam & Jetsam Corner: We hear through an anonymous source that Board

member Yvonne James Henderson is a Root$web employee. If true, this would

put her in the company of Betsy Mills, Bridgett Smith, and Megan Zurawicz,

who are also currently being paid by the competition and who are on the

board.

Cold Hard Cash Corner: We've heard tell of some interesting financial

"arrangements" out in USGW-land. In one state several CCs have been

asked to remove links to Ancestry.com's "partner" program from their USGW

county pages. In this program, if you provide a link from your site to

Ancestry and a visitor to your site uses that link to sign up for

Ancestry's paid services, the referring webmaster gets a small payment.

[Of course, the offending links might cut into Root$web's revenue stream;

I'm sure its no coincidence that the person who is demanding their removal

is one of RW's most dedicated supporters.]

In other states, blatantly asking visitors for cash is apparently

tolerated. Witness this blurb taken from the very top of the front page

of a USGW county page:

"In addition, paying for copies to distribute for the volunteers is a

significant cost, which [name deleted] and I now bear by ourselves. Your

help would allow us to recruit many more volunteers and put them to

work on the projects that interest you. For information on how to give,

please contact the county coordinator."

From elsewhere on the same page:

"Funding for the XXX Co. GenWeb Project currently comes solely from the

volunteers. This can be a strain on individual resources. We would

appreciate any donations toward the cost of photocopies and mailing

materials to volunteers for transcription... Contributions should be sent

to the County Coordinator for re-distribution to other volunteers."

[*sigh* Guess "volunteering" ain't what it used to be.]

The USGenWeb Project has always had a high level of discomfort regarding

soliciting for funds in any way, and the bylaws do state, "Solicitation of

funds for personal gain is inappropriate. This is defined as the direct

appeal on the home page of any of the websites comprising The USGenWeb

Project for funding to do research, to pay for server space, to do

look-ups, etc."[Article IX, Section 2]. I seem to recall someone being

severely raked over the coals over this very sort of thing a year or so

ago.

"If I had a large amount of money I should found a hospital for those

whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended

by words and phrases yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence

and oppression that howls daily about our ears."

--- Stephen Fry

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

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From merope@Radix.Net Tue Aug 17 18:34:18 1999

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 18:34:16 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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The fly in the ointment...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content; not nice for children and other

living things. Read at your own risk!

Sunday 15 August 1999:

There is no Board-L traffic on this date. [hey, no news is good news!]

Old News Corner: Linda "Day Late and A Dollar Short" Lewis has belatedly

picked up on a weeks old post by NC candidate Fred Smoot regarding the

possibility of establishing an independent server for the project, and is

using it and her fevered imagination to create creepy-crawlies with

which to alarm the State Coordinators. Although Mr. Smoot never once

mentions the term in his August 4 post, Linda repeatedly asks him about

his group of "silent investors"; who are they, are they going to make

money off their idea, are any of them not in USGW? Smoot's message was

originally posted to CC-L, where it sank with nary a ripple. Although

Linda has apparently revived the post, she failed to post it so the SCs

would know what she is talking about. [In even more interesting news, in

the same post to the SCs, Linda mentions that she's moved back to

Virginia. I _thought_ I felt a disturbance in the Force.]

Now You See It, Now You Don't Corner: In further news concerning our own

favorite Archives coordinator [and aren't you glad she's back?] a

diligent researcher has managed to unearth the OLD version of Linda's

"verbal" agreement with Root$web. This was posted Mar 31 1999 in response

to a request by one of her fellow SCs [its not the oldest one of course;

that one would be dated 1996]. Except for one interesting difference, the

two are quite similar. The difference though is that the older one says

"Neither party will place advertising on the Archives, unless both agree."

This provision is missing entirely from the newer one, published by Linda

"Sleight of Hand" Lewis on June 12 1999. Coincidentally [?], in the

intervening few months, Root$web has slapped cheesy ads all over the

Archives search engine and results pages. [One other difference in the

agreements is that the newer one says the Archives will be hosted by

Root$web "and no other server", effectively giving the Archives to RW.

But this didn't surprise anyone.]

Let's Make a Deal Corner: In response to requests from an SC, Brian "Its

All About Money" Leverich has posted the conditions under which he will

allow the individual XXGenWeb projects to have their pages under their own

domain name (ex: xxgenweb.com) Says Mr. Leverich, "If we simply host a

virtual domain, the fact that we're hosting the domain becomes lost on our

users. In a direct sense, that makes those domains complete money holes

for us; it costs us thousands to host them, but it generates no offsetting

revenue." He also says these arrangements "cheat" Root$web's users. He

says they'll consider an arrangement whereby "The single [XX]GenWeb front

door page resides at www.[xx]genweb.com/net/org; The XXGenWeb front door

page carries a top-of-page "hosted by RootsWeb" banner, and there is no

other cost"; and "All other [XX]GenWeb state pages (and any counties who

want to move) are hosted at:[xx]genweb.rootsweb.com without any form of

banner." [He appears to have given up on his former reason for not

hosting domain names, which was that no one knew to notify RW if there was

a problem. Now, of course, its because it "cheats" RW's users and doesn't

bring in the holy revenue. How many state orgs do you think will go for

this? If I were the gambling sort, I'd put money on IN and TN.]

"If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish

thing."

---Anatole France

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

----------------

From merope@Radix.Net Wed Aug 18 19:08:14 1999

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 19:08:13 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Like a day without sunshine...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Monday 16 August 1999:

The Election Committee Chair posts the following election reminder: "his

is just to remind everyone that the Run Off Election for USGenWeb National

Coordinator will end Wednesday, August 18th at Midnight Pacific Daylight

Time. If you haven't voted please proceed to

http://vote.rootsweb.com/usgw-nc.html and vote. We will make every effort

to announce the results at 10 PM EDT Thursday, August 19."

[On a wholly unrelated side note, our Election Committee Chair, Jim

Powell, has just become a grandfather. Congrats to the little one, for

ending up with such a fine grandpa!]

Election Update: You heard the man, go vote!

A Concerned Reader writes to say that at least one CC is apparently not

being allowed to vote by his SC. Turns out his SC submitted a two-year

old email address for him and despite numerous email exchanges with his

SC, he cannot get it changed to his new address. He can submit a vote

using his old address, but he cannot confirm it, so the vote is not

registered. The voting booth does not recognize his new address at all.

Coincidentally perhaps, this CC's SC is the current incumbent NC. Even

more coincidentally, the CC intends to vote for the other candidate.

Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair Corner: Another reader tells us

about a program called Webwasher. He says, "What this program does is

remove banners <and popup windows. It doesn't just hide the banner ad, it

strips the html code you are downloading and doesn't bother to dl the ad.

I've only given this program a real quick try on Rootsweb, but so

far, it's wonderful! No more fear of accidently clicking on a banner

and giving Rootsweb some cash!" [Ed. note: since it doesn't pull the ad,

it also doesn't count toward the CPM rate RW gets for the ads.]

The website is: http://www.siemens.de/servers/wwash/ and there are

instructions, etc. on the page. [Standard disclaimer: I haven't used it

myself so I can't personally endorse it. It sounds neat, but as with all

things these days, use it at your own risk.]

"The continued utterance of a lie does not make it true, but it does

convince many that it is, particularly if you can squelch most efforts to

expose the lie."

--- Shapley R. Hunter, 1992

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

-------

From merope@Radix.Net Thu Aug 19 14:22:33 1999

Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 14:22:31 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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If you think its butter, but its not...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Tuesday 17 Aug 1999:

Board member Lynn Waterman posts to ask that her old email address be

unsubbed from the list, as it no longer works.

Simple Is As Simple Does Corner: It has now been 5 1/2 months since the

National Coordinator asked Brian "King of The Mountain" Leverich to change

the Administration contacts on the .net and .org usgenweb domains to the

name of the current NC. As of today, this has not yet been accomplished.

As pointed out in by a recent correspondent to the CC-L list, there is

another person who could effect this change: Nancy Trice, former NC,

current RW employee, and admin contact for both domains. According to the

correspondent, "BOTH the Administrative and Billing Contacts can modify

domain registrations, including not only the names of the Administrative,

Billing and Technical Contacts, but also the domain server and also the

NAME of the Registrant. It would take Nancy about 5 minutes to go to

http://www.networksolutions.com/makechanges/ and change BOTH usgenweb.org

and usgenweb.net so that the Administrative Contact is the current NC and

the NAME of the registrant is the USGenWeb Project." [We note that if

it would take Nancy only 5 minutes to effect this change, than it would

similarly take _Brian_ only 5 minutes to make the change. Kinda makes one

wonder why he's holding on so firmly to control of the domain names]

Needless Duplication Corner: As announced in the New Zoo Review

yesteday, Root$web has added the June 1999 version of the Social Security

Death Index to its vast online holdings. While this is all very nice and

good, there are at least three other websites offering the exact same

thing for free and there seems little real point to wasting space and

money posting it yet again. [The newscube staff have a bet going on how

long it will take Root$web to claim compilation copyright on it. <g>]

"The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of

course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more."

---Woody Allen

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

--------

From merope@Radix.Net Fri Aug 20 10:48:09 1999

Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 10:48:08 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Is it live, or is it Memorex?...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* spleen venting potential ahead; contains editorial content. Read

at your own risk!

Wednesday 18 August 1999

There is no Board-L traffic on this date.

Election Update: The UsGenWeb Project 1999 Dog and Pony Show is

officially over and it looks like the dog won. With a narrow margin,

incumbent NC Tim Stowell defeated plucky challenger Fred Smoot by only 12

votes. Happily enough, though, 668 people voted in the run-off, and

although still a low percentage of eligible voters, that's 153 more than

voted in the original race. Congrats to Tim! [And congrats also to

Root$web; folks there must have slept a whole lot easier last night.] The

new Board members will be seated Sept 1, and then its business as usual.

Rah Rah Corner: AntiqueWeek has published a very positive article about

the USGenWeb Project in its August 16 edition. "USGenWeb: a great site

for genealogists", by Catherine Carter, describes the Census, Tombstone,

Lineage and Kidz projects in some detail, and gives an overview of how

USGW is organized by county and what sorts of resources might be available

to visitors. Although this article is apparently not available at

AntiqueWeek's web page, Celia Snyder has posted its contents to the CC-L

mailing list.

Flotsam and Jetsam Corner: An interesting quote made its way into my

mailbox this morning. It purports to be from the CC who plans to write

a pro-R$W article for Forbes online magazine: "...for all the concern

about RW, I have to say that there ain't a whole hell of a lot of product

to protect. Some of our pages are freaking dismal. Ugly, disorganized, and

bereft of actual helpful information." [Goodness, with that attitude

about USGW project pages, no wonder she's throwing her support behind the

500 pound gorilla.]

Special Treatment Corner: We hear through the grapevine that Brian

"Send More Money" Leverich has agreed to host the MIGenWeb state page

under its own domain name, migenweb.org. Bravo!

Au Revoir Corner: The DBS will most likely be off this weekend. We'll see

you all on Monday!

"Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;

But there is no joy in Mudville -- mighty Casey has struck out."

---Ernest L. Thayer (Harvard 1886)

This has been Your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Linduist

merope@radix.net

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