Start of FAQ 2.5 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Subject: FAQ 2.5 for RFD2: soc.genealogy.* groups > Newsgroups: news.groups > Followup-To: news.groups > This is a companion post to: > Subject: RFD2: soc.genealogy.* groups These questions pertain to the committee who wrote the RFD for the soc.genealogy.* groups. FAQ 2.5 ==== Q & A ON THE COMMITTEE WHO WROTE THE RFD ==== Q Describe yourselves. Q How did you go about bringing this to a vote? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ==== Q & A ON THE COMMITTEE WHO WROTE THE RFD ==== Q Describe yourselves. A The following list has two additions since the September FAQ post. GENEALOGY GROUPS PROPONENT COMMITTEE AND PROPOSED NEWSGROUP MODERATORS These are the individuals who have developed the RFD or who have volunteered to be moderators of the proposed newsgroups. Many others have contributed by answering our questions privately or by posting relevant material to the newsgroups or bulletin boards or mailing lists we read. We are a mix of people with assorted interests and talents in genealogy, on-line and off-line. Most of us think that genealogy on Usenet is badly named, and became impatient at some point by all the complaints about the name and with the lack of structure in an ever-growing newsgroup. Even more, we tired of the endless complaints about the complaints. Some of us supported previous reorganization efforts noisily, others quietly, and some not at all. Some joined recently with other organizational agendas. Several of us have experience in the addition of or changes to other Usenet newsgroups. Our one common goal is to provide a logical structure for the exchange of genealogical information everywhere. Denis Beauregard beaurega@ireq.hydro.qc.ca Major interests are in a one-name collection of Beauregard and equivalent families and in developing his own genealogy software (Q-Tree). Other interests: Operated a BBS for 1.5 years. Created fr.rec.genealogie in January 1994. Animator/moderator of FM-Genealogie, a FidoNet technology genealogy echo connected to fr.rec.genealogie. Future interest in connecting Canadian genealogy to this new hierarchy. David Chapin dchapin@er.arco.com Geophysicist, married, two kids, lives near Dallas, Texas. Has been doing genealogy for 24 years. Major interests are in Eastern European Jewish genealogy. Has lectured and written two books and several professional journal papers dealing with the subject. Reading soc.roots for over three years. Has had an interest in reorganizing genealogy on Internet since the topic came up in December 1993. Since March 1994 has been active in putting together the first serious attempt at reorganizing our Internet resources. David W. Furstenau df@unlinfo.unl.edu A "professional student" working in telecommunications at the University of Nebraska, Dave has been netting for several years. His key interest is the establishment of searchable archives on the net to facilitate genealogical research. Reinhold Herrmann rainer@retsys.gun.de Reinhold holds extensive resources about the history and genealogy of East Prussia and some other parts of Germany. His interest here is to help provide a better link among German genealogists and the rest of the world. The existing German mailing list Rainer runs on his home system will be switched over to a LISTSERV operation at the University of Karlsruhe upon the approval of soc.genealogy.german. Karen Isaacson karen@rand.org Operations research analyst specializing in the mathematical modeling of logistics systems. Married, two cats, two dogs, living in sunny, smoggy Southern California. Became hooked on genealogy in 1986. Following soc.roots (or was it net.roots then?) ever since. In 1990, took over the maintenance in the Roots-L listserv of the RSL (Roots Surname List, then known as the Family Index). Later started the Roots Location List and the index to the Roots-L archives both of which are now managed by others. Proposed co-moderator of soc.genealogy.methods. Kaleb Keithley kaleb@x.org Genealogy merit badge as a Boy Scout, 2+ years following soc.roots. Not involved in the May/June discussions except in waiting to cast a vote. Proposed a draft RFD in July, joined this group at that time. Has prior experience in Usenet newsgroup creation. Susan King susan.king@trace.cgsg.com Founder/co-moderator of JewishGen, the Jewish genealogy mailing list gatewayed to the JewishGen FIDOnet echo. Very interested in getting JewishGen into Usenet with a dream of bringing Jewish researchers from around the world together into one forum for sharing information. Brian Leverich Brian_Leverich@rand.org Information Systems Scientist, specialist in knowledge-based simulation modeling. Genealogist for 8 years, has done extensive work on the John Haymond descendants in America and other studies. Internet activist since the early 80s and soc.roots reader essentially since the founding of the group. Most importantly, karen@rand.org's husband and sysadmin. One of the proposed co-moderators for soc.genealogy.methods. Denis McKeon galway@chtm.eece.unm.edu Unix and DOS user, 41, former user support person and mail and news admin at university, interested in genealogy software, been reading soc.roots about 2 years (starting with all the archived posts from '87 to '91), been reading Usenet on and off since 1982. William Mills bill@leland.stanford.edu Bill Mills joined soc.roots early this year. He began researching his family 12 years ago when a cousin encouraged him to go to France to find their immigrant ancestor. Areas of interest include Lorraine, the US midwest, and New York City. He is currently a graduate student in electrical engineering at Stanford and a Naval Reserve helicopter pilot. Proposed co-moderator of soc.genealogy.surnames. Margaret Olson olson@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu Programmer, PAF user, grandmother, resident of Illinois, heritage mostly in New England and the British Isles. Interested in logic, politeness and compromise. Reading soc.roots for 4+ years. Supported the ideas in the May RFD draft and wanted to help in providing a logically organized structure for genealogy newsgroups. Tim Pierce twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu A Unix systems programmer, onetime system administrator, and all-around Usenet gadfly with an off-again, on-again interest in genealogy. Has contributed to the RFD mainly by acting as advisor on Usenet principles and procedures. Proposed co-moderator of soc.genealogy.surnames. John Pimentel pimentel@roots.ultranet.com Doing genealogy for 12 years, interested longer than that. LDS member, former president of a PAF User's Group, interest in Portugese genealogy. Ran a genealogy BBS for about a year. Prior to shutting down, started gating SOC.ROOTS into FIDOnet. W. Fred Rump fr@icdi10.compu.com Fred has been a long-time resident on soc.roots. He has often been outspoken on some of his ideas about making genealogy on the net a better world-wide resource. His expertise is in genealogy and local history as it involves German ancestry. As a goal in life he would like to have helped to promote genealogical information across cultures and linguistic boundaries. Ellen Seebacher elle@midway.uchicago.edu Longtime Usenet news administrator, resident of soc.roots since 1987, amateur genealogist (primarily German heritage) for a decade. Would like to see an organization which allows easy browsing of discussion-oriented topics and easy searching of surname and other data. Alicia Towster towster@usl.edu Interested in genealogy for about ten years; research mainly in the mid- Atlantic states (NJ, PA, MD, VA) and west to the Missouri River Valley. Participant in soc.roots for about 7 years. Presently an academic computing administrator; experience in user consulting and desktop publishing. Would like to see a newsgroup for helpful discussions of the research methods, resources, and problems that genealogists have in common, regardless of the different families or different cultural groups which they study. Proposed co-moderator of soc.genealogy.methods. Q How did you go about bringing this to a vote? A The following is extracted from a post to news.groups in mid-September by Margaret Olson - one of the committee members. It gives some background of the writing and defending of this proposal by the original fourteen members of the committee. This post is not about genealogy and it is not about the items proposed in the Usenet RFD on the topic of genealogy newsgroups. It's one committee member's inside view of how and why the RFD is here for your consideration. I am here, and I think all my fellow committee members are here, because we would like some reorganization, yes, but mainly because we think there have been way too many non-genealogy messages in soc.roots suggesting that a change is needed to the structure of soc.roots with no good solutions about how to accomplish the changes. I'm talking about the "We need.... " messages - (better subject lines, replies by private email, additional groups, friendlier people, archives, no more talk about splits, ... etc). It's one thing to talk, but actually getting it done is another thing. Those messages are posted by brash people brave enough to post - or too foolish not to. What we needed was a plan - and then a way to find out if anyone else agrees with it - and then a vote - and then implementation of any changes voters agreed with. I feel that until we have a real honest to goodness vote of all interested readers we really don't know what people want. Let's have a vote and get on with genealogy. All well and good - but how do you do that? Well, in Usenet, you devise charters and plans for your group(s), write a Request for Discussion, decide who should know there will be a discussion, get the approval of the Usenet officials (volunteers, all) who provide the forum for discussions - and then, following a set of rules devised for newsgroup creation and NOT for genealogy, you carry on your discussions in news.groups and, if all goes well, you have a vote. And you go on with whatever the voters have decreed. And, because so few people understand the rules - or even know there are any - you try to get out information on that too. And above all you try not to offend anyone. The genealogy aspects of the current RFD are covered in the RFD. Most of our committee has felt from the beginning that this is the only important question - that the proponents and the system we set up for ourselves to develop a viable RFD are irrelevant to the discussion. The RFD should speak for itself. However the suspicions I am hearing from some of you makes me want to explain the mechanics of what has been happening. This message is not intended to try to change any votes, but rather to try to allay the doubts and suspicions about the procedures. When the vote is over, I will be very glad to leave news.groups behind me and go back to the friendly confines of whatever group soc.roots becomes. If the groups are not approved, at least I will go back to soc.roots knowing a fair vote has been taken after enough discussion to allow informed voting. And, yes, I expect it to be a friendly place. During the chaotic time in June right after the gateway from ROOTS-L to soc.roots was discontinued, three or four people who had been part of the noise on-line continued to correspond off-list about how an effective reorganization might now be accomplished. Discussions were discontinued in soc.roots and any sad and curious people who wrote David Chapin were told to just wait for a little while to see how the sudden disconnection would affect readership and participation in soc.roots. As it was obvious an archiving capability was desirable, though, David went looking for a home for mailing lists (and archives) for groups which might be proposed - and found one. At this point (Just before July 1) David rounded up a motley bunch of strong-willed folks who had corresponded with him into what some of you are calling a secretive group on a power trip. In truth, I think he got those of us who had been noisiest in May - figuring we might as well try to work out our differences in private first. Each of us had a completely different reason for wanting to be in on these discussions. Most had to introduce ourselves to each other - we were strangers before this undertaking. Some of us were suffering from varying degrees of paranoia, too. We had seen the May 'discussions'. We all agreed on the basic wish - to rename soc.roots to something with genealogy in the name. We all agreed on the positive aspects of including ethnological groups, though finding appropriate names was timeconsuming - Group Advice advised us the names we liked wouldn't fly ... so we compromised again. We also agreed that the addition of a separate surnames list would improve the main catch-all list as well as make searching for surnames a lot easier. We polled ourselves on whether to ask for rec.genealogy or soc.genealogy. Those who preferred soc.* said they could easily be persuaded to compromise. Those who preferred rec.* preferred not to compromise. So we went with rec.genealogy. We tried to get a good framework - one which would allow for additional groups if requested in the future. It took several weeks of discussions - and the independent posting by Kaleb of a draft RFD - (which quickly got him involved in this group - after some initial paranoia about *his* motives ... ) - to agree upon a draft RFD to come from the committee. The Usenet Group Advice folks were shown the draft - and we made changes. Several people from our associations with ROOTS-L and elsewhere were shown the draft. And most committee members spent a lot of time picking the brains of their on-line aquaintances about concerns which came up. Though there are only 14 names on the RFD (now 16), there was initial input from many, many more. Getting all these things into an RFD was chaotic. At one point Kaleb told us trying to keep us on-topic was like "herding cats". We also considered very carefully about how we should communicate with interested genealogists outside of the soc.roots community. The Usenet rules require that we post the RFD to soc.roots and fr.rec.genealogie and JewishGen because the RFD proposal directly affects those groups. We knew, too, that the readers of ROOTS-L and alt.genealogy and some other groups would be interested because they may have access to the new groups and wish to read them. Usenet rules require us to tell them about it, too. We were also very sensitive to trying to prevent the kinds of discussions in ROOTS-L and soc.roots that had so angered people in May and June. We had to word things carefully and try to keep discussions to the news.groups forum. We decided a list of anticipated questions - with our answers - would be useful. We wrote up very short descriptions of the proponents so that readers would be reassured about our reasons for being here. We thought we covered most bases. One thing which has become clear recently is that none of these documents are still available (except by email) as the shelf-life of Usenet group posts is short - and unarchived. I don't remember that the committee thought about that ahead of time. If you plan to do an RFD in the future, you should consider it. Not everyone comes into discussions at the beginning. Our discussions also included guidelines for our own participation. Kaleb is the official proponent and only one allowed to talk to Group Advice. The RFD is our discussion, so we don't start discussions but we will promptly answer questions. We will be sensible campaigners. We all agreed that we should try to present a united front in supporting the RFD - that our compromises had been made, and that arguing among ourselves publicly would be self-destructive. We urged politeness and helpfulness. We would stay out of any group except news.groups with our discussions. We would refer people to the RFD and FAQ. And we would not have to clear our own posts with the rest of the committee. We've had a little trouble doing all this, but have tried. Kaleb's herd of cats has pretty much kept focused on the RFD. And then we submitted the RFD to be posted. We waited - and we waited - and wondered where it was. I think it came back for one last revision. It was finally posted a couple of weeks after we thought it would be - just in time for Labor Day (US Holiday, only - but affecting a lot of people). For several days, we got positive comments. Then the people who did not like rec.* as the hierarchy started to speak. Our committee started to answer too often and too stridently (in my opinion, anyhow) and it got noisier. When the suggestion came from a member of Group Advice that we try a straw poll, we got to work with the wording. We also read complaints from the genealogy readers about any group being called .misc but knew Group Advice strongly advocated it. We got a request to add a moderated .methods group to the RFD from someone prepared to work on a charter - and we agreed to the addition. We then sent our Straw Poll off to one of the Independent Votetakers, told everyone we were doing that, and we waited, and we waited. Again. Eventually we read (just like the rest of you) on-line in news.groups that the poll-taker to whom we had sent the poll was on jury duty. Genealogy messages in news.groups had nearly disappeared, and in our mailing list we were getting frantic about where our poll was. And we saw people writing to news.groups accusing us of hiding things and being secretive about the poll. I suppose in hindsight we could have kept posting "it's on its way" messages, but we thought it would show up any minute, so kept quiet. It has been an interesting and enlightening experience. I have no expertise in mailing list maintenance or creation (several of the committee did - others are learning). I had little idea of the rules one has to obey for Usenet group creation. I do now - and many things in the RFD and associated with the voting and polls are due to those rules and not to arbitrariness on the part of the committee. We cannot post the official documents - only the Usenet folks do that. We can't quote them without permission. etc. We had a lot to learn. It is more complicated than I had imagined it would be. I have no conception of why individuals would feel such mistrust of people who are just bringing things to the proper forum for a vote. It seems to me that our RFD and FAQ are very clear. Some of us talk too much, but we do have a good proposal. It never occurred to me that too little talk would irritate people. I thought it was too much talk we needed to avoid. We all have real jobs, too. My summer is gone - I'm getting Christmas catalogs already and I just got an amusing letter from my High School Reunion Committee asking us all to send in a "Report" for the next newsletter entitled "What I did on my Summer Vacation". Should I tell them? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ End of FAQ 2.5