FYI.
Tina
_____
Subj: [BOARD-L] Guidelines Committee weekly report for the week ending March
23, 2002
Date: 3/24/2002 8:16:25 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: merope(a)radix.net
Reply-to: BOARD-L(a)rootsweb.com
To: BOARD-L(a)rootsweb.com
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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