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Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 23:40:08 -0500
From: Al Heigl <alheigl@rconnect.com>
Reply-To: alheigl@rconnect.com
Organization: Mill City Records, NARAS, Mensa, I.S.P.E., Triple-Nine, ex-MDA
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To: Leigh Ann Tredinnick <dedet@baldwin-telecom.net>
CC: "William T. Conlan" <bill@conlan.com>,
Judy Hogan <mensajud@tcq.net>, Ken Silver <kensilver@hotmail.com>,
"Paul D. Jensen" <poppoppj@visi.com>, Mary Abbey <mabbey@isd.net>,
"Jeff Rowan (E-mail)" <jeffrowan@personeldecisions.com>
Subject: Re: Web Site
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DeDe, thanks for your e-mail.
> Leigh Ann Tredinnick wrote:
>
> Al,
>
> At our special board meeting at the date on the letter - I just moved
> and nothing is where it should be. Here is what happened.
>
> First of all. Please stop harassing Paul.
I have not been harassing Paul in any way.
On 8/12/02, Paul wrote "We have also rescheduled our board meeting on
these issues for next week. I'll keep in touch."
Other than a brief note the following day, I have yet to hear back from
him, which doesn't seem like him at all.
Around the same time, I had a number of e-mails out that I would
normally expect responses on, but wasn't getting anything. I learned in
a phone call that an old high school chum in Wisconsin had replied right
away, but I never got it. So part of my concern was that for some
reason my e-mail either wasn't going out or wasn't coming in. So I've
been sending repeat e-mails out to several people in hopes of finding
out what has been going on.
I certainly would have no reason to harass Paul, as he was the one who,
as Acting LocSec, took the time and trouble to come down to Northfield
and discuss this situation with me, and made the extra effort to draft a
6-point agreement that would go most of the way toward solving our
current website problems. (I had certainly hoped that a majority of the
Board would show Paul the courtesy of supporting his positive and
reasonable agreement.)
> He presented your case
> with great presence and honor.
I really don't consider it "my" case. It's more a question of whether
we have a good, established website or the inept one currently up
there. Since I support the former, it's "my case" in that sense, but it
is presumably also the case for all visitors to our website who want to
see quality, consistency, and a good image of our group.
> He supported you through this whole
> thing and deserves better than to be sworn at.
I have never sworn at Paul in any way, shape, or form; I have never even
used language in any e-mail to him that wasn't used by us in my
apartment.
Again, I feel that Paul isn't supporting *me* so much as my simple
belief that Minnesota Mensa deserves a good website (not the inept junk
that's been foisted on us), and my willingness to work hard to design
and maintain such a site.
> Second of all neither the vote to remove you
again and the one to make
> Jason the new Webmaster were unaninimous.
All I know about that is that in his 8/13/02 e-mail, Paul mentioned that
"Al, a voting majority is in agreement with our agreement."
I must infer that one or more people have been waffling in their support
of the agreement that Paul carefully and thoughtfully crafted. That's
kind of unfair to Paul.
I just wish that anyone whose support is wavering would just e-mail me
and say "Al, I would like to support Paul's 6-point agreement that you
both signed, but I have the following concerns ..." and see what kind
of response you get.
> Third of all, we are not "out to get you".
I would be nice to believe that. The fact remains that we are all very
human, and "kill the messenger" is a natural human response. That
little kid who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes on was
probably seriously resented.
We should never lose sight of the fact that this whole mess started when
one or more persons made the deliberate decision to utterly freeze out
the Webmaster (and his expertise) from the AG 2003 project. To those
people, a vote "for me" would be an admission of how bad that decision
was, and what a mess the ill-named website turned out to be. (Please
note that I have not "named names" on this issue.)
Let's face it -- there are "personalities" deeply involved in this.
Otherwise, if the Board were voting solely on the merits of the issues,
your loyal Webmaster, and our quality website (that Jason admits to
having destroyed), would be back on line, and Jason could play in his
AG2003 sandbox for a year and that would be that.
I put it to you that Mensa-level decision-making mandates reinstatement
of your Webmaster and our website.
> I'm also looking into the technical charges you
made toward Jason.
Folks, this is an easy task -- purely binary, objective questions and
answers.
1. Either the domain name ag2003.com follows Mensa policy or it does
not. The yes/no answer can be found at
http://www.mensa.com/.
2. Either Jason has destroyed ALL of our existing site or he hasn't:
A. Bookmarks. Either he says "First of all, you'll find that if you
have bookmarks for pages in the Minnesota Mensa website they will no
longer work." or he doesn't. Answer is at
http://www.mnmensa.org/webmaster.html.
B. Search engines. Either Jason broke their links, or he didn't.
Go to http://www.google.com/
In turn, enter and search for any or all of the following:
Ray Voet
Betsy Ruppert
Karen Cyson
DeDe Tredinnick
Click on any of the Minnesota Mensa website links that come up.
Either the links work, or they don't.
3. On 8/12/03, Paul wrote that "the server is neither JTL nor any other
commercial operation" and on 8/13/02 he wrote that "The new server is
American Mensa Ltd".
Either this information is true or this is false. (NOTE - I am NOT
accusing Paul of lying. I believe he was passing along someone else's
misinformation.)
If the server is not JTL, there will not be any reference to JTL
(JTLNET) at the bottom of
http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=mnmensa.org&SearchType=do&STRING2.x=21&STRING2.y=6
If the server is AML, at least one of the following links will bring up
the Minnesota Mensa home page:
http://www.mn.us.mensa.org/
http://www.minn.us.mensa.org/
http://www.minnesota.us.mensa.org/
They don't. Somebody lied to somebody, and you shouldn't tolerate that.
4. Either Jason's pages are cross-browser compatible, or they aren't.
For those who have it, fire up your level 4 Netscape browser (I use the
latest, 4.79). Go to
http://www.mnmensa.org/ and click on any of the
page links on the left.
Either you will see page content, or you won't -- there will be just a
column of links. Click any of *those* links -- you'll just see the same
thing, over and over -- no page content.
For a more radical example, point Netscape at
http://www.mnmensa.org/handbook/.
You will just see an angled column of
links. Try the same URL in MS Internet Explorer.
This is not a minor issue. A recent report on a client's website showed
that 7.5% of its visitors were using level 4 Netscape. Minnesota Mensa
can not afford to alienate (or appear ridiculous to) 7.5% of our present
and prospective members. (And who knows what other browser variants
Jason didn't design for.)
A site like ours, reaching out to the general public (and presumably the
most intelligent segment), has to be visible to ALL browsers.
5. There are other, more technical issues. For example, if you look at
Jason's MN Mensa "home page" html (View | Source), you'll see that he
has only two website items in the header section:
"<meta name="Author" content="Jason L. Schmitz">
<title>Minnesota Mensa</title>"
And I think it's indicative that he puts his own name over ours
(standard practice puts the Title at the very top).
The header section of our "real" website has 15 lines, including
keywords and description (which some of you may have heard are needed by
the search engines) and the lines informing browsers that our website
does not contain violence or porn, all of which Jason has omitted.
There is also no browser-readable privacy policy (I know what files to
look for, and they aren't there).
--------------------------------------------
Subjectively, I know nothing about Jason, other than in a very short
time he has managed to obliterate every last page of a quality website
carefully built up over more than four years.
He claims to be the "Principal Internet Architect at startribune.com"
whatever that means.
(Design-wise, his idea of a home page for us looks a LOT like a
newspaper home page. Minnesota Mensa is not a newspaper.)
He also says, "I'm no stranger to this business of webmastering ..." but
over and over and over, the demonstrable objective evidence here is that
he doesn't have a clue. He certainly shows that he's a stranger to
basic webmaster tech skills as shown in the five items I listed above.
First and foremost, when one takes over an existing site, one NEVER
destroys the original content!
There is a Board meeting scheduled for Tuesday.
This is an excellent opportunity for the Board to finally ratify the
good-faith 6-point agreement that Paul and I signed and that at one
point a majority of you supported. That would get things back to
normal, and avoid a lot of future grief and embarrassment.
As an alternative, you could vote to require Jason to fix every one of
the five technical points listed above, immediately, or resign. (That's
a cheap shot on my part, as what he says on his "webmaster" page means
that his foolish choice of server makes impossible his fixing Item 2,
the destruction of our existing pages. Frankly, I doubt that he has the
experience or skills to fix any of the other things, either, or he
wouldn't have made those serious, basic mistakes in the first place.)
I can, and will, restore our website to its original condition, with all
pages present, under their original filenames. I also have a site
redesign underway, per DeDe's 7/3/03 e-mail to me. It will look a bit
like Jason's in terms of color and graphics, but will not look like a
newspaper, and will not have all the amateurish mistakes.
This situation has to be corrected, and quickly, before Jason does any
more damage.
If any of you have any comments or questions, PLEASE drop me a note
before Tuesday.
--
Al Heigl
Mill City Records
P.O. Box 177
Northfield Minnesota 55057-0177
507-663-6090
(Professional Proofreading,
Web Site Work using FrontPage 2002)
http://www.millcityrecords.com/webwork/ |