On Sun, 24 Jan 1999 13:48:34 -0500 "Billie R. McNamara"
<mcnamara(a)usit.net>
wrote:
Say -- our own Ed Book is running for a position on this august
<hah> body.
What do you have to say about this current activity, Ed?
My apologies to those readers who dislike politics on PAGenWeb-L. Please
feel free to delete this message now, and please accept my apologies for the
inconvenience.
First, some people seem to be confused about whether the proposed 'Standards
and Ethics Statement' is in force or not. (It isn't.) While I am not
currently on the board, as near as I can figure out from the public info,
the history of this latest issue is as follows:
1) A member of the board proposed the Standards and Ethics Statement.
2) The statement was seconded by two other board members.
3) Since the current board realized that this was a major issue, they placed
the issue on the national website and solicited opinions of members as
required by the by-laws. (Article VIII, Section 3)
4) The opinions of the membership were apparently very unfavorable.
5) After the opinions of the membership were reviewed, the motion was
withdrawn by the person who proposed it.
Essentially, the statement was proposed, but was never adopted and so has no
force. To have went into effect, the statement would have required the
votes of at least two-thirds of the board members according to the by-laws.
(Article VIII, Section 2) (As a historical aside, prior to the adoption of
the by-laws last summer, the National Coordinator could have adopted such a
statement unilaterally.)
Second, even if the 'Standards and Ethics Statement' had been adopted, it's
my opinion that it would have been invalid. Article IX of the By-laws deals
explicitly with standards for members. The standards specified are the
presence of a USGenWeb logo and no commerical activity on the main page of
the website. Article XI, Sections 2 and 3 have some additional requirements
that apply specifically to county coordinators: subscription to state
mailing list, link to state project, query pages, and 'any additional
requirements specified by the state organization.' (Some additional
requirements applicable only to State Coordinators and Special Project
Coordinators are included in Articles XII and XIII respectively.)
Since the by-laws explicitly address the issue of standards for members, it
is my opinion that any additional national-level standards for members or
national-level requirements for CC's will require the approval of an
amendment to the Bylaws which will in turn require the votes of 2/3rds of
the members before becoming effective (Article XVI, Sections 1 and 5.)
Quite frankly, I don't think it's possible under the current by-laws for
either the National Coordinator or the Advisory Board to impose any
additional national-level standards/requirements on the volunteers without
the consent of the volunteers as expressed by the approval of an amendment
to the bylaws. I don't see this as a major problem. If there's a valid and
rational need for some additional standards or requirements at some point,
it should not be hard to get the approval of 2/3rds of the volunteers if
there is indeed a valid and rational need.
Again, as a historical aside, before the adoption of the current by-laws,
the National Coordinator and/or Advisory Board had the ability to change
standards/requirements whenever and however they chose.
Third, even if the Advisory Board had the power under the by-laws to impose
additional national-level standards/requirements, it's hard to see how the
decision would be enforced by the Advisory Board under the by-laws. The
proposed statement said: 'Failure to rectify said non-compliance within two
weeks will result in the member's project web sites being de-linked from the
Project.'
Article VI, Section 5 authorizes the Advisory Board to take similar
de-linking actions, but realistically, the National Coordinator and the
Advisory Board control only the national webpage. Their ability to DIRECTLY
'de-link' members' web sites is pretty much restricted to the state and
special projects links (but see Article XII, Section 9 and Article XIII,
Section 5, which require the approval of 2/3rds of the volunteers within the
state or special project in addition to 2/3rds of the Advisory Board for
removing state or special project coordinators.)
In fact, the vast majority of members' websites are not directly 'linked to'
on the national pages. For instance, if the advisory board were to decide
that my county here in Pennsylvania should be de-linked for some reason
under Article VI, Section 5, they would have no means of accomplishing this
without the help of the PA state coordinator. If he were to review the
situation and decide that my conduct was so bad that I should be delinked,
he would have the ability to do so with a simple change on the state web
page. If, however, he were to disagree, it seems to me that it would be
impossible for the Advisory Board to enforce their decision to de-link. (I
suppose, if they thought the situation was severe enough, they could de-link
the whole state or remove the state coordinator, which, as pointed out
above, would require the consent of 2/3rds of the volunteers within the
state. (Article XII, Section 9)
From a pragmatic viewpoint, the Advisory Board has no power to de-link
most
members without the consent of the state coordinator. Accordingly, if such
decisions should ever become necessary, it seems that the state coordinator
should be consulted very early in any discussions about such matters and
his/her opinion should be given considerable weight.
My personal opinion is that Article VI, Section 5, is pretty unenforceable
except in regards to the state and special project links. It makes sense to
me that it should be amended to apply only to the state and special project
links over which the Advisory Board has some control, while any de-linking
at the local level should take place within the context of the state
organization or special project organization.
Finally, having said all that, I do think the USGenWeb Project would be a
better place if all volunteers were to try to fulfill the spirit of the
proposed statement:
1) keep the best interests (however they may perceive them) of the USGenWeb
Project at heart and avoid washing dirty laundry in public,
2) strive for quality,
3) honor intellectual property rights,
4) credit others for work that they do,
5) respect and be polite to other volunteers, and
6) respect private e-mail communications.
Such actions are simply polite, mature behavior. (I realize that I am
ignoring several sentences in the original Statement that are quite sweeping
in their scope and open to quite varying interpretations.)
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the Advisory Board to be the Manners
Police for the USGenWeb Project, and I, as a candidate, have no desire to
attempt to investigate and rule on every alleged infringement of common
courtesy.
From a practical viewpoint, the advisory board is really fairly
powerless to
punish members. Rather than injured parties complaining directly to
the
Advisory Board, it makes much more sense to take the problem situation to
someone who can actually do something about it. In most cases, this would
be a state coordinator or a mailing list listowner as opposed to the
Advisory Board.
In summary, Billie, the by-laws approved last summer significantly limit the
power of the National Coordinator and Advisory board as opposed to the
rank-and-file volunteers who make this project what it is. The by-laws
aren't perfect, but I believe they are an improvement over the situation
that existed prior to their adoption when the National Coordinator's and
Advisory Board's power was unlimited.
Ed Book
Butler County, PA --
http://www.rootsweb.com/~pabutler/
Election Statement --
http://www.rootsweb.com/~pabutler/election/election.htm