Many of you may notice that a new coordinator has been apponted for both the Switzerland
and Jefferson County GenWeb sites.
I've told her I will not contribute new information, nor will I offer my stuff that
was posted on the old sites, to GenWeb.
This has nothing to do with the coordinator, who seems enthusiastic. It's just I
don't believe in the GenWeb system and haven't believed in it for a long. I've
been through changes like this before with other sites in which I have contributed a lot
of material and some in which I have contributed nothing. An old site has a lot of
info--then a new coordinator is named and the great content vanishes.
I simply believe the volunteer system doesn't work. The issue is continuity and
volunteer sites simply can't guarantee that once posted, info will remain available.
The other thing is consistency. We labored long and hard to get information on these
sites. But so many times when I visited GenWeb sites for counties I am interested in,
there's simply little available. This is disheartening.
I'm hoping maybe that between the growing amount of content available on the Jefferson
County Historical Society and Madison Public Library sites that some of this information
can be provided again. And as bad the quality control is sometimes, lousy policies and
lack of good customer service,
Ancestry.com is worth the money simply because it has the
resources to provide a lot of content (No matter how stupid their new family tree system
is. I started putting up all my families in Gedcoms and had about 20 up. After I found
moving them to the new tree system lost all the notes and supporting information, I delete
all but two of them.)
Again, this has nothing to do with the people--the coordinators--but about what I see as a
better chance to have information made available and remain available
Bob