To address your concerns:
- The contact links all work for me when I click on
them, they are set up to open a new message in your
default e-mail. If you use webmail it might not work
properly (others have had this problem too and that's
the only explanation I can come up with). If you roll
the mouse over the link you'll see my e-mail address
and can enter it manually.
- NOTHING was deleted from the site except for a few
excerpts in the obit section that had no documented
sources. I can't speak for what Connie did when she
was the coordinator, but I have not deleted any pages
from the site since I took over. If it was there when
Connie left it's still there, although I have
reorganized the site so you may have to do some
searching to find it. As for the change in site
design, I am standing by that. I think it's more
easily navigable than it was before and allows for
more organized expansion. There's always a learning
curve as we get used to something different but I
genuinely think it's a change for the better.
- I understand your frustration with the lack of
content on the website. I feel the same way,
especially considering that neighboring Montgomery
County probably has more information than any other
GenWeb site online. Unfortunately I don't live in
Clinton County so there is little I can personally do
about adding content to the site and I'm sure you've
noticed that the mailing list, website, etc. get very
little traffic. There are very few researchers working
in Clinton County, my attempts to drum up more
interest have so far been unsuccessful. Several
volunteers have coordinated their efforts to provide
us with marriage records and several folks have
contributed obits, but other than that no one has
volunteered to contribute anything. Believe it or not,
the coordinators from Montgomery County are our
biggest contributors because when they find a
Montgomery County obit pertaining to Clinton County
they forward it to me.
- It would be very disheartening to think that someone
would delete data to put their own "stamp of
ownership" on the site. Rest assured that I would
NEVER do that. I do genealogy to preserve history and
share it with others, period. And I will never put any
kind of stamp of ownership on the site. Nothing about
the site is "mine" whether I entered it or not. Even
the site design isn't mine, it's a professional
template that I adopted in attempt to make the site
easier for people to use (another reason why I believe
it's a more effective design).
I don't mean to sound defensive. I want everyone to
know that I am open to suggestions of any kind, I
genuinely want to improve the site. I just want to
give you all every assurance that I'm not one of those
"genealogy pirates" who goes around trying to take
control of genealogy in a certain area. If anyone has
concerns please tell me. The search feature hasn't
been added so if you have trouble finding anything
feel free to ask me. Also, I am currently without
internet access at home so I can't do updates on a
very regular basis. Please bear with me, I am keeping
everyone's e-mails and will make updates whenever
possible. As always, suggestions, contributions, etc.
are ALWAYS welcome!
Lena
gostraka(a)yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:49:35 -0500
From: Dee Raymond <deeraymond(a)earthlink.net>
Subject: [Clinton Co IN] What the heck happened to
the Clinton County
website?!?!
To: inclinto(a)rootsweb.com
Message-ID:
<E1H2bPH-0006wO-00(a)pop-gadwall.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii";
format=flowed
I've not visited the Clinton County website for
quite some time and
was shocked when I did today. The format is now
totally different
from what Connie had set up and it would appear that
tons of input
from contributors is no longer there. The change in
format is
probably not that big a deal, but I would certainly
hope that the
info that's been contributed thru the years hasn't
been lost.
Connie had established a category, she had given it
a catchy name
which I can't recall right now, but the idea was for
us to contribute
any bits and pieces of info that we thought might be
of help to a
fellow researcher even if it didn't apply to our
surnames.
I spent many hours sifting thru my
great-grandfather's Civil War
pension files to document names, dates, and places
concerning people
connected to the Clinton County area, but yet not of
my family, and
submitted them to Connie. In turn many other people
submitted similar
info which I'm sure took them equally long to
accomplish. It's really
disheartening to think that someone might discard
this data just to
be able to put their stamp of ownership on a
website.
I would have sent this message to the new county
coordinator, BUT the
link that you click on to send feedback/suggestions
to her isn't
operational. Hopefully, someone on the list will
know what's going on
or will be able to forward this message with my
concerns to her.
Dee in FL (researching Hobson and Chastain in
Clinton County)
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