Sep 25-30 2000

From merope@Radix.Net Tue Sep 26 13:48:20 2000

Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 13:48:15 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

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To: Daily Board Show <usgw_all@listbot.com>

Subject: Daily Board Show

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All shook up...its Your Daily Board Show!

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

Saturday 23 September 2000:

Tina Vickery suggests that a "combination of Parliamentary Procedure,

Bylaws, "good ole" common sense, and respect of not only our volunteers

but the project will suffice."

Pam Reid attaches the following commentary to her abstention on the

"parliamentary procedure" question: "The problem is that I really believe

some allowances do have to be made for the fact that our meetings are

conducted in cyberspace and are SO very different from being all together

in a meeting room - the kind of meetings that RRoO were written

for...However, it is in the bylaws that we follow them...It is my opinion

that it isn't possible to use RRoO as written given the way our meetings

are conducted. It is also my opinion that the original intent of that

particular bylaw was to give some structure to the way the board works,

but that our situation of meeting the way we meet be taken into

consideration...I don't know what the answer is since the bylaws are

written the way they are. If each of us interpreted it in the same way,

there probably wouldn't be a problem...The bylaws are written in such a

way as to require us to do something that we really can't do (my opinion)

and we take a bashing and bash each other every time we try to work

through or work around that problem."

Joe Zsedeny agrees with Teri and Pam, noting "While voting on following

the Bylaws is repugnant to me trying to adapt RRs to our situation is

difficult sometimes. I think we should just cut one another some slack

here and inject our common sense when the guidelines get blurred. We are

here to conduct the Project's business and not impress others with our

knowledge of parlimentary procedure. And, RRs should never be used to

delay and frustrate."

Sunday 24 September 2000:

Tim Stowell announces the final results on the double vote. On the appeal

vote, 12 members voted "yes" and 3 voted "no". Tim's finding that Ellen's

motion is out of order is successfully appealed and Tim gives the motion

number 00-29 and opens the floor for discussion. On the "parliamentary

procedure" question, 3 Board members voted "yes", 3 abstained, 1 indicated

he was "present" and eight did not respond. [surprise, surprise...the

same three people who voted to support Tim's ruling on Motion 00-29 also

voted "for" using parliamentary procedure and the bylaws.]

Monday 25 September 2000:

Teri Pettit notes "When somebody hears something in your words that wasn't

what you meant, I think it is wiser to revise your words than to try to

insist that others concede they were misinterpreting you." She notes

again that no one other than Shari Handley has bothered to respond to her

question regarding acceptable wording for the motion, so she still doesn't

know whether her suggestion will be acceptable to those who most

strenuously opposed Ellen's original wording.

Teri proposes an extensive amendmendment to motion 00-29 [see below for

entire text].

Teri explains her suggested amendments: "(1) References to the USGenWeb

Project By-Laws are removed and replaced with references to the first

usages of the marks by the USGenWeb Project to identify our web pages in

summer of 1996. This is because the web page usage both predates the

By-Laws by over two years, and is also the primary form of usage that we

are protecting...(2) Reference is made in the second paragraph to describe

why the Project objects to the application in Linda's name, to wit, that

if granted it might make our own national web pages in violation of her

trademark, because our organization is not named "Linda Lewis" and the

declaration swears that no "other organization" besides Linda Lewis has a

right to use the trademark. Including this in the motion itself will

hopefully make it clear why it is felt to be vital to the welfare of the

USGenWeb Project that Linda's application be either withdrawn or denied.

(3) The word "instructs" is replaced by "officially requests." An

instruction IS nothing more than an official request, but some detractors

may have heard connotations of force or intimidation in the word

"instruct", that perhaps they will not find in "request"...(4) For the

same reasons, the phrase "take further action" is replaced by "proceed

with other measures to protect the Project's right to the mark", to

clarify that the further actions were never intended to be threatening or

retaliatory, but were simply left unspecified to allow time for study and

discussion of the alternatives...(5) The 5 business days is expanded to 10

to allow Linda sufficient time to discuss the implications of withdrawal

with the members of the Advisory Board and/or the Trademark Committee, and

hopefully receive answers that are adequate to address any concerns she

may have. Also, given that the Trademark Committee has until October 15 to

report, and any Advisory Board trademark action would have to follow that

report, the limit of 5 days is essentially void anyway...(6) An additional

paragraph is added containing passages that recognize the benignity of

Linda's intent, that state we do not intend to leave the marks

unregistered as they were in the past, and that we do not intend to deny

to Linda the authority she has had since the founding of the USGenWeb

Archives Project to determine membership in that project. It is hoped that

these modifications will reassure those who have erroneously suspected the

motion of being a "weapon" to attack Linda or to exclude her from a

position of authority over the USGenWeb Archives. It is also hoped that

they will relieve Linda of the fear that if her application is withdrawn,

the USGenWeb Archives mark would remain unregistered and be easy prey for

those who might try to profit from an unauthorized usage of the USGenWeb

Archive's name and reputation." Teri says she is open to additional

suggestions that "preserve the goals of the original motion, while

avoiding the problems that some to suspect a hostile agenda that was never

meant."

===

Dangerous Words Corner: Someone allegedly at the Michigan State Attorney

General's office has suggested that folks who are distressed at

FamilyDiscover.com's linking to their work and charging folks to view it

use the following procedure to thwart them "If one of your pages is linked

for profit by any site that you do not wish, it is a good (but somewhat

temporary) idea to replace the information on that page address with a

message like " This page has been illegally linked to by a 'for profit'

search engine site without permission of the owner. This is a (name of

county) [XX]GenWeb Site Page (then give the home page addie link) and

the info. is free at the following address (then give the new page address

link)." The person who originally posted this indicated that the MI AG's

office specifically suggested the use of the word "illegal" since it is

"powerful". I personally have a hard time believing that _anyone_ in an

Attorney General's office would suggest publicly accusing someone of

illegal behavior; if the charge is not true, one is open to a libel suit

[and unfortunately what FamilyDiscovery.com is doing is probably not

illegal; the suggestion that one accuse FamilyDiscovery.com of "illegal"

activity was forwarded to State-Coord-L by our National Coordinator,

which suggests that he approves of this approach]. In any case, according

to the correspondent, the MI AG's Office of High Tech Crime Investigation

is on the case.

Get a Job Corner: MyFamily.com is hiring for a position called "Marketing

Manager of Roots Web Business Unit", for their Provo office. Among other

responsibilities, this person is also "responsible for monetizing the RW

user base" [that would be you]. If interested in this, or any of the

other interesting positions open at MyFamily, go to www.hotjobs.com and

check 'em out.

===

"The truly skillful politician is one who, when he comes to a fork in the

road, goes both ways.

---Marco A. Almazan

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

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---

Full text of Teri Pettit's suggested amendment to Motion 00-29:

"Whereas, the mark "USGenWeb" has been in public use since June 1996 as a

Collective Membership mark[*] for the USGenWeb Project, a non-profit

volunteer group providing free online genealogical services, and the

derivative mark 'USGenWeb Archives' has been in public use since August

1996 as a service mark for the USGenWeb Project's archival services, and

the derivative mark 'USGenWeb Archives Project' has been in use since that

date as a Collective Membership mark for that subset of the Project's

volunteers who manage and maintain that archival service, it is the

finding of the USGenWeb Advisory Board that the USGenWeb Project as a

group is the rightful holder of 'USGenWeb', 'USGenWeb Archives', and all

derivative marks.

Whereas the USGenWeb Archive's Project's current Coordinator, Linda Lewis,

filed[**] with the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office (PTO) on 1 May, 2000,

an application (Serial Number 78006402) in which "Linda Lewis" is listed

as the name of the applicant, and "volunteer group" as the applicant

entity type, that application containing the declaration that "no other

person, firm, corporation or association has the right to use the mark",

such an application, if granted, could deny to the USGenWeb Project the

lawful right to use the marks by which it has identified the Project's

member web sites for over four years.

Therefore, the USGenWeb Project Advisory Board officially requests that

Linda Lewis withdraw her application as soon as possible, and that she

furnish the Advisory Board with a bona fide copy or proof of her

withdrawal of said application.

The Advisory Board further advises Linda Lewis that it is the Project's

intention to retain the legal right to the USGenWeb Archives mark, and

that if proof of withdrawal is not received by the Advisory Board within

ten (10) business days of the passage of this motion, the Advisory Board

will assume that withdrawal is not forthcoming and will proceed with other

measures to protect the Project's right to the mark.

Recognizing that Linda's goal in making her application was to protect the

USGenWeb Archives mark from unauthorized use by those not representing the

USGenWeb Project, the Advisory Board assures Linda Lewis that if her

application is withdrawn, the Advisory Board will act as expeditiously as

possible to register the USGenWeb Project's legal right to the mark.

Recognizing that the authority for determining membership in the USGenWeb

Archives Project lies with the Coordinator of the USGenWeb Archives

Project, the Advisory Board further assures Linda Lewis that if her

application is withdrawn, authority for granting or removing

authorization to use the USGenWeb Archives mark to identify web sites as

part of the USGenWeb Archives Project will be assigned by the USGenWeb

Project to Linda Lewis as long as she is a member of the USGenWeb Project

and holds the office of Coordinator of the USGenWeb Archives Project.

References:

* http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/tmfaq.htm#DefineCollMark [def]

** http://www.radix.net/~merope/gifs/uspto1.jpg [1st page]

http://www.radix.net/~merope/gifs/uspto2.jpg [2nd page]"

From merope@Radix.Net Wed Sep 27 13:48:11 2000

Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 13:48:09 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

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

To: Daily Board Show <usgw_all@listbot.com>

Subject: Daily Board Show

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On my honor as a Scout...its Your Daily Board Show!

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

Tuesday 26 September 2000:

Ginger Hayes seconds Teri Pettit's amendment to Motion 00-29.

Wednesday 27 September 2000:

Tim Stowell opens discussion on the amended Motion 00-29.

===

Quid Pro Quo Corner: A number of readers have pointed out to me that

Ancestry.com and Root$web have recently added a number of reciprocal

links. Ancestry has had a prominent link to RW's mail lists in the middle

of its home page [http://www.ancestry.com] for some time, but recently

they have also added a search box for RW's WorldConnect Project to the

search results pages of the Ancestry World Tree. RW in turn has recently

added a search box for Ancestry's 650 million records on _it's_ own home

page [http://www.rootsweb.com]. Ancestry's box gets second billing to

RW's new "MetaSearch" box, which claims to search "40 major databases" at

RW [this must be the big "global search engine" they've promised for so

long, but the mailing lists are not included]. If you check the "more

searches" listing, you will find a number of Ancestry databases listed,

including "The Source", "Map Center", the Ancestry World Tree, "GenPage

Finder" and telephone and address listings for Canada and Europe.

Broken Toys Corner: For those of you curious about the status of the

soc.genealogy.surnames.* newsgroup hierarchy, Margaret Olson [of Root$web,

which moderates _all_ those newsgroups] has indicated that 1) its broken;

2) its been broken since June; and 3) it will be broken for the

foreseeable future. It appears that the person assigned to fixing the

automoderator is too busy to attend to it. In the meantime, the only

posts to the lists appear to be the RW-generated RSL updates. [If RW

can't handle the task of moderating these lists, perhaps someone else can

do it?]

===

"It is a seldom proffered argument as to the advantages of a free press

that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as

to what the government is doing."

---Walter Cronkite

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

-------

From merope@Radix.Net Thu Sep 28 13:01:36 2000

Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 13:01:36 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

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

To: Daily Board Show <usgw_all@listbot.com>

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Making a difference...its Your Daily Board Show!

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

Thursday 28 September 2000:

No Board-L traffic on this date thus far.

===

Making Waves Corner: It is reliably reported that the "Marketing Manager

(Roots Web Unit)" position listed at www.hotjobs.com no longer includes

the responsibility of "monetizing the RW user database". [At least

_someone_ reads the DBS! "Monetize", btw, means "to turn into money"]

Our thanks to the anonymous correspondent who pointed out to us that the

job listing has changed!

Misery Loves Company Corner: There's recently been a bit of buzz on the

State Coordinators' list and the USGENWEB-ALL list about Kindred

Konnections, another fee-based online genealogy provider. Kindred

Konnections is unique in that it has a program whereby users can get free

subscription time in exchange for transcribing records [I tried this once;

they sent me a scan of about 25 entries from a census which I took about

10 minutes to transcribe and which earned me an hour of free time in their

databases. Not a bad deal.] It turns out they aren't so unique in their

approach to linking to online data that other people provide for free.

Like FamilyDiscovery.com, Kindred Konnections is also linking to free

genealogy data sources such as USGenWeb page, RW's user pages, etc., and

charging people to see them. They are also displaying the page in frames

so the home URL is not apparent to the viewer. Give it a try: go to

http://www.kindredkonnections.com and put the name James Janda in the

search boxes. Then click on the "Ancestral Archives Index" to pull up the

four hits you should have gotten. You will see that none of the hits are

actually in KK's database but are housed at such places as Root$web's user

home pages and Gendex. If you click on any of these links you go to a

subscription page.

This is how KK apparently justifies saying it has "over 1 billion names"

available for searching. We admit to being very perplexed by this state

of affairs. In our experience, Kindred Konnections is fairly well

respected although they are a relatively small-time player in the

online genealogy field. Their "free for transcribing program" idea is

great and is still, so far as I know, unique. Yet they obviously feel

that what they are doing is somehow OK. It may not be illegal, but it

is definitely not the way to win friends among the online genealogy

crowd and the bad publicity it engenders should alone be enough to

discourage it. But they persist not only in doing it, but in justifying

their personal profit off of other people's hard work by saying "our

subscription fees are only for access to the services that make this

information easily available." ["Cindy", feedback@kindredkonnections.com]

At least one very upset USGW member has publicly threatened to sue

them for including her GEDCOM in their search and charging for access to

it. She and others are also busy moving their pages so that KK's index

points to dead links.

Sign O' the Times Corner: This week's New Zoo Review includes the

following blurb tucked about midway down [but not included in a "paid

advertising" section]:

"Visit www.Ancestry.com the #1 Source for Family History Online"

Bet you never thought you'd see _that_ in a RW pub.

The latest edition also contains a brief paragraph about surveys: "From

time to time, we will be sending surveys to a few RootsWeb users chosen at

random, because it will help us improve the features on RootsWeb. The

surveys are completely anonymous and used for statistical purposes only."

[Yes, you too can help Root$web "monetize" its user base!] We've already

seen one of these "anonymous" surveys regarding WorldConnect and the

Ancestry World Tree. Looks like there'll be more.

===

"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I

should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul."

---Thomas Paine

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

-------

From merope@Radix.Net Sat Sep 30 12:36:38 2000

Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 12:36:37 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

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

To: Daily Board Show <usgw_all@listbot.com>

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Blinded by the light...its Your Daily Board Show!

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

Thursday 28 September 2000:

Betsy Mills reminds the Board that "RootsWeb and MyFamily are awaiting

instructions to change the contacts on the two domains (.net and .org)

over to whatever the Advisory Board wishes." She says both domains are

currently paid for.

Tim Stowell tells the group "The info was forwarded to Rootsweb this PM."

[He did not apparently bother to share with the Board exactly what that

info is.]

Pam Reid lets the Board know she will be out of town all weekend.

29 Friday September 2000:

Shari Handley asks Tim to specify "exactly what information was forwarded

to RW in regards to the domains."

===

Domain Name Shuffle Corner: Whatever information Our Not-So-Esteemed

National Coordinator sent to RW/MyFamily.com, it is not yet reflected in

the domain registration information for either usgenweb.net or

usgenweb.org.

Commerce Marching On: Several readers have pointed out an apparent

profound change in Root$web's policy toward the ROOTS-L mailing list.

Apparently they will now allow selected advertisers to send ads to that

list. Case in point is this recent ad forwarded from Cyndi Howells [of

Cyndi's List fame]:

"Home Sweet Home. Win a $10,000 Trip to Your Ancestral Homeland from

Generations & Heritage Quest. BELLEVUE, Wash. (September 21, 2000)

Generations and Heritage Quest have teamed up with Flipside.com to offer

one lucky person a trip anywhere in the world to visit their ancestral

homeland or other locale of research interest. Family history

enthusiasts, genealogists and anyone else with the travel bug will jump at

the chance to visit their ancestral homeland and discover their roots

firsthand in this Generations Ancestral Homeland sweepstakes worth up to

$10,000. Complete sweepstakes information is available online, or on boxes

of the award-winning Generations Grande Suite 8.0, Generations Beginner's

Edition, and Generations Liberty Edition family tree software from

SierraHome this fall. Participants can enter the sweepstakes at

www.flipside.com/homeland <http://www.flipside.com/homeland> until

January 31, 2001."

The ad goes on to describe Sierra and its parent company Havas

International at length and in glowing terms. Going to the website above

requires one to register with flipside.com, who promises not to "sell or

share your personal info with anyone else but Sierra.com, our co-sponsor

in this promotion." flipside.com is, surprise, also a division of Havas

International, and is essentially a gaming site. We here at the DBS know

of at least two people who have been chastised by the ROOTS-L screeners

for posting inappropriate commercial content. One mentioned a for-fee

service in response to a direct question, the other mentioned a FREE

genealogy service [albeit one that Root$web considers a rival]. So, is

the above essentially a free ad masquerading as a sweepstakes and does it

presage the shape of things to come [remember, we must monetize the RW

user base] or is it just OK because its Cyndi?

Hide And Seek Corner: Our friends over at FamilyDiscover.com have been

asked to vacate from the premises at Verio and have settled in at a new

ISP, bluehill.com. We hear the complaint letters have followed them to

their new home.

===

"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."

---Mark Twain

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

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