"Paul D. Jensen" wrote:
>
> Al, a voting majority is in agreement with
> our agreement. So, sleeping dogs etc...


Paul, I really hope we have that voting majority, because it hasn't been
a sleeping dog situation, and MN Mensa's presence on the Web has been
severely compromised.

This morning I casually clicked a bookmark to look at the August
calendar, and came up with a 404 Not Found error page (which referenced
a server error, too -- try it (http://www.mnmensa.org/calendar.htm)).

Going to the plain domain name (for the home page) and exploring around
a bit, I discovered that Jason has completely destroyed all four+ years'
worth of our website, and is unable to bring it back.

In exploring, I found page after page where there was navigation
information, but no other content. I then discovered that I could see
content, but only if I used MS Internet Explorer instead of my usual
Netscape.


Whatever the vote status, I think you should consider making the Board
aware of the following:


==============================================================

1. Jason has destroyed all pages in our existing MN Mensa website. He
also claims, in effect, that he can not restore them (because the server
he chose can not handle the common ".htm" filename extension).


2. On page http://www.mnmensa.org/webmaster.html, he actually says,
"First of all, you'll find that if you have bookmarks for pages in the
Minnesota Mensa website they will no longer work."

He adds, "Just think how lucky you are because now you get to surf the
website anew, and re-discover all of the interesting things you've
forgotten were here."

I have never seen such an overt contempt for the people who have loyally
visited and bookmarked our website over the past four+ years.


3. This also means that ALL search engine links to pages in our website
are now broken, and Jason apparently has no problem with this, either.

Links to any of our internal pages from other Mensa websites are all
broken and useless now, too, of course.


4. He has also destroyed the link to our WebRing page, which brought us
a lot of visitors. (Go to http://n.webring.com/hub?ring=mensans -- our
link is toward the bottom of the page.)


5. Individual page content is not displayed at all in a level 4
Netscape browser. Jason did not test for (or is ignoring) cross-browser
compatibility.


6. The home page header information contains an acceptable title
("Minnesota Mensa") but does not have the most basic information such as
Keywords and Description for the search engines, data showing that our
site is suitable for family viewing, browser information on our Privacy
Policy, etc. (This and much other header information was easily
available to Jason from our original home page.)

The only other piece of header information other than title is "<meta
name="Author" content="Jason L. Schmitz">" -- and he put that above the
title line.


7. I have been to

http://www.mn.us.mensa.org/
http://www.minn.us.mensa.org/ and
http://www.minnesota.us.mensa.org/

None of these are valid addresses, as opposed to
http://www.chicago.us.mensa.org/ or http://www.wi.us.mensa.org/, which
work just fine.

>From this I conclude that, contrary to what I've been emphatically told,
our website has NOT been placed on the AML server, but rather on JTLnet
(http://www.jtlnet.com/), where Jason puts his own personal sites.
(This appears to be confirmed by the information at the bottom of the
"whois" page at

http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=mnmensa.org&SearchType=do&STRING2.x=29&STRING2.y=14
)



==============================================================

Paul, this whole thing has been a disaster that just "keeps on giving."

Like I said, I sure hope you're right that we have the voting majority
to get me reinstated/reappointed.

It would appear that my first responsibility is to put things right, and
get our four+ years of website back on line before the folks with
bookmarks get really pissed, and the search engines delete all
references to us because they can't find the pages when they revisit.

My first (and necessary) request would be that you (or the Board, if
required) direct that the domain be transferred back to Jim Sheehan's
Outlook Technology server immediately. Once that's done, I would be
able to restore *all* of our existing site, with the obvious exception
of the hit counter. Thus, all the existing bookmarks and links would be
valid again, and the work I'm putting in on redesigning the look of the
site would again be applicable.

(The "registration" is just for the domain name -- "Billing contact"
could/should be the MN Mensa treasurer, and one of my clients has Jim
Sheehan as both "Technical Contact" and "Administrative Contact"
although Admin could also be somebody on the Board.)


If there are still "financial considerations" I would ask you to put
forth the theory that Minnesota Mensa should pay *something* for being
published on the Web, just as we pay to publish Mensagenda on paper.
Perhaps you could guide the Board to establishing what they think would
be a fair price to pay.

Keep it under your hat until needed, but I will personally cover any
difference between what the Board feels is a reasonable hosting price
and what Jim Sheehan charges.

I consider it *that* important that we not lose the good content that
has been meticulously built up over the past four+ years.

(And AML can set it up so that "http://www.minnesota.us.mensa.org/"
points to our website.)


Paul, we need to get things back to "normal" as quickly and definitively
as possible, and get this disaster behind us.

Last week, I got a written "bare-bones" letter of apology in the mail
from Judy, so that's Item #2 done.

Please, let me know if there's ANYTHING more I can offer prior to the
Board's vote on reinstatement.

Best,

Al