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From: <>
Subject: [BOARD-L] Re: <http://resources.rootsweb.com/USA/ME/index.html>
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 14:48:58 EDT

Dear USGenWeb Board Members & Candidates are who are running:

Tom Raynor who host two Maine Coordinator of two County pages has sent me the
following statement on the issue of "clusters". I hold back my own opinions
at this time, but asked Tom Raynor if he would share his opinions with all
of you. Tom Raynor is not running for any office but has put a lot of
thought in to his statement. Please read his statement as I do also at the
same time. Statements like Tom Raynor's are important to me. I know that
they are important to you also. I am going to continue to read opinions from
other SCs & CCs as well. Please send me opinions of your CC's or even your
own, if they differ from Tom's. Thank you for your time.
Please read Tom Raynor's statement on this issue.

In a message dated 7/3/99 9:26:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time, TomRaynor writes:

<< In a message dated 7/2/99 2:46:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Mainegen
writes:

> Could I have your permission to forward your concerns to these people.

Certainly. However, let me re-word things a little so as not to divert
people's attention away from the central issue:

Well, I briefly looked at my county's RootsWeb site. It's obvious that
RootsWeb envisions hosting the USGenWeb site for each county in the country.
In fact, it makes no mention of the "official" USGenWeb site for this county.
It leads the visitor to assume that there is something "missing"; that this
county has no coordinator, and that this will be "corrected" in the future.
Presumably, where a USGenWeb coordinator has elected to use the RootsWeb
offer of free web space, their county is being presented. In other words, it
leads to the impression that, if you don't use RootsWeb to host your USGenWeb
site, you are doing something wrong, and they are going to go ahead and
create a RootsWeb site for your county without you.

What I suspect is bothering some people is that there are (or at least,
were) two different organizations - a for-profit RootsWeb and a volunteer
USGenWeb. It is clear that RootsWeb is now trying to do the same thing
USGenWeb was formed to do - local resources, local queries, local archives.
This in itself is not a bad thing. Good ideas (like a query page for each
county) tend to be reinvented by anyone trying to accomplish the same goal.

RootsWeb has a long history of doing good things for genealogy on the web.
To their credit, they "grew" their site into what appears to be a thriving,
for-profit business. Again, this is probably a good thing; we can't have too
many quality genealogy sites.

USGenWeb started out as a bunch of genealogists, each willing to donate
their own time and a little web space to make a national, volunteer network.
The focus was to be on local information, local resources, and queries about
our local ancestors. The whole thing was supposed to be a model of
distributed processing - each county hosted by a different domain, but all
linked together into a cohesive whole.

Now, it appears that model is changing. First, RootsWeb was kind enough to
donate web space to USGenWeb volunteers, then archive space. That was a nice
gesture, but as more and more volunteers took them up on that offer, RootsWeb
gained a lot of clout over the project.

Now, they have taken it upon themselves to implement a new framework for
USGenWeb. One that by-passes our distributed model. They put a new front-end
on the existing USGenWeb sites hosted by RootsWeb, and left the rest
conspicuously absent. Anything not hosted by RootsWeb is not referenced.
Worse yet, it's replaced by a "boilerplate" county page of RootsWeb's own
design.

The viewer is left with the distinct impression that something is missing.
The site has a place to put all the things that a USGenWeb site has, and
leaves the impression that it's just waiting for someone to take over. It
also solicits queries and resources. Essentially, all it needs is time and
the sanctioned USGenWeb site will be superfluous.

Now, I'm not the type to get mad. My time has enough value that I'd be happy
to give control of my two counties over to RootsWeb. But please understand
this: I did not volunteer for RootsWeb. I thought a distributed,
not-for-profit USGenWeb was a good thing. I felt strongly enough about the
USGenWeb to dedicate my time and resources to it. I doubt I will feel the
same way toward a for-profit business.

We - the volunteers of USGenWeb - must decide if the offer of free web space
is valuable enough to justify giving up some of the cornerstones of the
USGenWeb model; distributed processing and storage, volunteer vs. for-profit,
etc. If so, I will turn what I have over to RootsWeb and move on to other
things. But we really should make that decision ourselves, not have it
imposed by an outside organization.

- Tom >>

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