Unless something really delusion-shattering comes up, I will not continue to
fill your mailbox with forwarded reports of the Guidelines Committee.
However, if enough of you want to see them, let me know and I will keep
sending. You can also subscribe to the Daily Board Show and get these as
part of that. Just visiting the URL at the end will let you ikeep up with
this committee's decisions.
Originally From: merope <merope(a)radix.net>
Subject: [DBS] Guidelines Committee weekly report for
Permission to forward as appropriate is granted.
GUIDELINES COMMITTEE WEEKLY REPORT, for the week ending March 23 2002
===
On March 17, the weekly report is submitted to the Project and three
comments are received from Project members. One of these addresses a
grammatical error in the working document, which is corrected. One
concerns the management of state mailing lists and is deferred until the
Committee is discussing State Coordinator guidelines. The third contains
several questions, as follows:
1. "The suggested requirement that Local Coordinators provide a link on
their home page to the main USGenWeb Project page is a new requirement,
correct? I don't recall hearing anyone make suggestions along this line
prior to this report, so I am curious as to whether this is something that
most Project members want...if compliance with a logo requirement is not
currently being attained, how will Local Coordinators react to an
additional link requirement?"
The Committee discussed this comment for a couple of days. We agree that
this would constitute a new requirement, but feel that it would not put an
undue burden on the LCs, nor would it unduly infringe on a LC's right to
determine their page design. Providing a link back to the USGenWeb Project
not only makes sense, since the LC's page is part of the Project, but would
be a boon to visiting genealogists. We have thus decided to keep this in
as a new requirement.
As part of this discussion, we also discussed logos. Project members are
required to prominently display an official USGenWeb Project logo, but
"prominent" is not defined. A Committee member noted that her state
defines "prominent" as "near the top" and this has worked well in that
state. Another Committee member discussed the proliferation of banners,
ads, and other logos on Project web pages. After some discussion, several
Committee members noted that in many cases these banners and ads might be
required by the hosting server, and in any case there is little that can be
done about it without getting into very subjective areas of design and
creativity. A recommendation that the logo be placed near the top of the
LC's main page is suggested and agreed to by a majority of Committee
members. This recommendation is limited to the "home" or "main" page
of the
local website.
"2. Probably not important, but I couldn't figure out what the
contradiction referred to by the following is -- State Mail List: It was
noted that the current requirement for CCs to join a state mailing list
contradicts a requirement in the current guidelines for State Coordinators."
A Committee member provided the answer for this question: "the
contradiction is in the way the sentence was written. SCs are required to
maintain a state mail list and have all LCs subscribed. The CC previous
guidelines indicated that the State might "NOT" have a mail list and if
that were so they should contact their SC."
The Committee will revise the Guidelines to address this discrepancy.
"3. Regarding disclaimers that USGenWeb is not affiliated with non-USGenWeb
message systems, I'm not sure the definition of "non-USGenWeb" is entirely
clear. For example, is a query system maintained by the local genealogy
society in the county which I coordinate a "non-USGenWeb" system? Would I
need a public disclaimer that USGenWeb is not affiliated with the local
gnealogy society? Are Query Express/Surname Helper "non-USGenWeb"
systems?"
There was much discussion on this issue, including a description of Query
Express and a description of the extent of control LCs may exercise if they
manage Ancestry message boards. The Chair of the Committee pointed out
that the USGenWeb itself does not have a query system and that even a
system managed entirely by a LC is technically a "non-USGenWeb
system." The Chair thus suggests changing the wording of the
recommendation to read "If you choose to use a query system that is managed
by someone other than yourself, such as a commercial company, its is
recommended that...etc." The general consensus is to leave the disclaimer
in as a recommendation only to LCs and to word it more generally to refer
to query systems that are not controlled directly by the LC.
After further discussion, the recommendation to add a disclaimer regarding
off-site query systems was temporarily removed from the working
document. As noted above, most Committee members are in favor of
recommending to LCs that they include such a disclaimer, but it has been
suggested that since LCs link to many places and resources that are out of
their control, a more generic disclaimer that a LC could add to their home
page might be more suitable. The Committee will explore this issue further.
===
The current version of the working document is posted
at:
http://www.radix.net/~merope/lcguide.txt
Please address comments to Teresa Lindquist <merope(a)radix.net>
-Teresa Lindquist
Chair, Guidelines Committee
Representative At Large, USGenWeb Project
merope(a)radix.net