I am forwarding to you a message posted on one of the other mail lists which
is followed by a straightforward message from Dr Brian Leverich of Rootsweb.
Please consider becoming a member or sponsor of Rootsweb.
For more info, just click on:
http://www.rootsweb.com
Bill Utterback wrote:
My friends -
I generally do not bring you news about RootsWeb, whose servers house
some 4000 mail lists, including this one, because I know you all get the
RootsWeb Review about once a week, which pretty well covers what is going on
within RootsWeb.
However, on one of the lists which we list hosts use to discuss list
problems and other items of mutual interest, a discussion was started by
a few people concerning the tiny salaries paid to a few people who give
practically all of their time to the RootsWeb Cooperative (they were
complaining - if you can believe it - about them getting paid at all).
As most of you know, RootsWeb was created by, and is "owned" by Dr. Brian
Leverich and his wife Karen Isaacson, both superb computer people and
genealogists. They created RootsWeb and they have funded 90% of it out
of their own pockets since its creation. This means that they have a
houseful of computer equipment, as well as other equipment in a hub
elsewhere, that runs all of these lists, as well as web pages and other
items for the USGenWeb - the effort is huge and growing by leaps and
bounds. However, their corporate sponsor, Palladium, has disappeared
into a merger with another company, and that funding has evaporated. It seems
nclear whether any other corporation will step forward to help underwrite
hese huge costs.
In the message which Brian sent to the listowner list, he makes the first
mention of danger to the whole RootsWeb concept. He is rarely
pessimistic, and if he is concerned, then we all need to be concerned. He
finds it particularly depressing that only a small percentage (2%-6%) are
helping to support RootsWeb in any way, even though there are literally
hundreds of thousands of people regularly using the mail lists and the
other web pages and items which RootsWeb hosts. You can see that he has
aken out a $25,000 loan just to try to keep the equipment growing with
he needs of RootsWeb.
The bottom line is that if we, as users of these RootsWeb services,
can help with a few dollars (and it does not have to be much at all, if
we all get involved) in support of this fine group, we are in very real
danger of losing these mail lists and literally hundreds of web pages of
genealogical material (including the JP Images Page and many, many
others) that is today available. Please give this some thought, and see if
you can find a few dollars that you could donate to RootsWeb to keep this
effort alive. I have long said that Brian and Karen cannot forever
continue to incure financial hits in the range of ten of thousands of
dollars at a time, and still be able to keep RootsWeb alive. Take a look
at:
http://www.rootsweb.com
and you can see how to donate if you wish to do so. I urge you to
consider it. It is a great investment. Brian's message follows. Let's see
if we can make it a merrier Christmas for Karen and him.
My apologies for the lengthy message, but I think it needed to be said.
=====================================================
Karen and I are in the hole on RootsWeb; not only have we not been
paid anything, we've been paying out of our pockets for the privilege of
working here night and day without weekends or holidays.
(Just *today* Karen and I took out a $25,000 loan to cover the fact
that the Palladium sponsorship has apparently died with their
acquisition by TLC, and to pay for the hardware we're going to need
to handle the new users we expect to have after Christmas.)
Just so you fully understand what I've told you above, you should be
aware that in terms of traffic RootsWeb is one of the *top 25* or so
sites on the whole Internet. Folks who can run these sorts of facilities
are absurdly rare (there are a few hundred of them in the whole world),
and senior system administrators at the other "Top 25" sites generally
have salary+benefits+option packages that run in the $200,000-500,000
per year and up range.
###
Folks should be clear on the concept that the administration staff
at RootsWeb is making a huge contribution to the genealogical
community by essentially donating our time. The fact that each of
us is personally donating services worth tens or even hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year is part of the reason we find it so
depressing that only about 2-6% of our users are choosing to support
RootsWeb at all, and that even among our supporters the average
contribution is only one-third of what "tens of thousands of
genealogists" (the Wall Street Journal) are spending at
Ancestry.com.
I don't think RootsWeb is going to fold anytime soon. But I'd be
lying to you if I didn't tell you that the staff is seriously wondering
whether the community values our efforts enough that continuing on
with RootsWeb makes sense.
The admin staff wants to give the genealogical community a great
online genealogical library, but we can't do it if only 2-6% of our
users will voluntarily choose to support us. Without more support,
RootsWeb can't afford to buy the servers and bandwidth and scanners
and such that we need to bring online the whole US Census and the
British Birth/Marriage/Death records and all the other resources
we'd like to make freely available to the entire community.
Maybe Ancestry has it right. Lock up the resources and charge the
users through the nose. Oh well. -B
--
John E Cain; 4601 Concord Drive; Garland, TX 75042
http://www.rootsweb.com/~msamite/index.htm -----Amite County MS
http://www.rootsweb.com/~jecain/index.htm ----Cain/Ware list and My Website.