It has come to my attention that some folks are misunderstanding my
concern over our archives. I am NOT advocating "splitting up" the
contents
of the archives of the USGW Project.
I *realize* and respect that some people may feel this is best, but I do
not share that view.
If it's any comfort, Sandy, I knew what you meant :) And to me, the idea of
splitting up the contents of the Archives defeats the purpose--it's like
taking the town library and putting half in one building, then putting up
another building across town for the other half. All the information may
still be there, but it's not terribly convenient to not have it all in the
same place!
My WHOLE point in my suggestion was since people seemed to feel
uncomfortable with the archives (as a unit!) being "separate" from USGW,
and having a different agreement with RootsWeb than does the USGW
project, then wouldn't it just be easiest for Linda and the archives to
become part of USGW??
And I second that notion. This collection of data is titled, and being
promoted as, the USGW Archives. If it's not part of USGW, perhaps it should
be titled differently so that no one confuses it with an official part of
the project. I'm also not suggesting that Linda has committed some kind of
unpardonable sin or shouldn't continue with what she's been doing. But if
as a CC, there are requirements that my page must meet in order to display
the USGW logo and be considered part of the project, then it seems
reasonable that there should be some oversight of projects as large as the
Archives.
My ONLY concern about this situation is the agreement which grants
exclusivity to *one* server to house this entity (i.e. archives).
If the archives *project* (as a whole) ever needed to be or wanted to be
moved to another server, this agreement seems to preclude it.
Seems to me his response spoke volumes.
***
When you talk about "flexibility", you're
euphemistically saying "I
want RootsWeb to pony up free unbannered space now, decline offered
datasets and refer them permanently to me, forego the publicity
that RootsWeb might receive if it hosted its own Archives project,
and then I want to be able to walk out of the relationship whenever
I want."
***
I think that this paragraph of Dr.B's reply is more telling than the other
paragraph, though. And I think he has a valid point. My personal opinion
is that the Archives aren't giving up much to say that Rootsweb is the
exclusive home of the data, especially if Rootsweb is giving up the
opportunity to host their own archives or the archives of other
organizations. The resources required to put up USGW Archives sure aren't
coming cheap--finding another home for a project that size wouldn't be easy,
and probably wouldn't be free.
And if it comes right down to it, there's really no way that Dr.B could stop
the Archives from moving everything. If the file managers decided tonight
to remove all the files from Rootsweb, well, they've got the passwords.
It's as easy to delete files as it is to upload them. I would hope that
there are backups of files somewhere. They could be uploaded to another
server, assuming we could find another one. The only way that Rootsweb
could prevent the files from leaving would be to change passwords on the
database before the files could be deleted, effectively taking over the
database--and doing that would be cutting their own throats. And to be
honest, as long as backups of the files exist, they could *still* be loaded
on another server, even if the copies on Rootsweb couldn't be deleted!
Angie