To: WP-Org Advisors
Fm: Mike and Sandi Zets, USNA-Net
Gentlemen:
It is with some regret but with a hardened resolve that I must advise WP-Org of the departure of the Navy Parents, the USNA-Net listservers and the associated web site from WP-Org. We no longer wish to avail ourselves of the services of WP-Org and its host servers.
This decision is a long time in coming and is not undertaken without serious prior consideration but we have determined it is necessary to insure the continued growth and development of our Naval Parenting group.
Effective immediately, the USNA-Net listservers and associated web sites will begin operating independently of WP-Org. We will no longer participate in any WP-Org sponsored functions or activities.
Our primary reasons for taking these actions are to maximize the potential we recognize in fulfilling our Mission of supporting Parents of Midshipmen in every way possible. To remain a subordinate segment of an organization dedicated to West Point will not assist us is attaining that goal. We are at a juncture which requires continued improvement in our relationship with the Naval Academy and its Alumni Association. As long as we are perceived by the Navy community to be a part of WP-Org, that relationship cannot be developed and will never flourish. Additionally, we object to the increasing pressure to generate more and more money for WP-Org with the advent of each successive fund drive while services received in return have not kept pace with the amount of funding provided by our members.
For some time now, we have been refused even the most reasonable and modest requests for modifications to the services offered to us by WP-Org. We find we can no longer tolerate the inactions of the organization as it attempts to manage by committee while ignoring the needs of one of its largest, yet least appreciated, segments. Unfortunately, recent rhetoric about serving the needs of the Navy component comes as too little, too late. To illustrate the seriousness and pervasive extent of these continuing problems, we offer the following...
Level of Service Issues...
1. We have repeatedly sought relief from HTML coded email (RTF/Mime) on our lists only to be advised by D. Welle (SysOp) and others that there was not time or resources to devote to this very serious problem for our list members while the time of both of WP-Org's full time employees are dedicated to such essential tasks as on-line registration for class lists for reunions and vacation excursions.
Ms. Price has been allowed to build databases and custom registration pages for a class reunion while Navy is told that MIME is a 'no-go at this time" due to time constraints on the part of WP-Org's paid staff. (D. Welle's email of 9/4/01)
D. Welle told ALL Moderators (email of 8/7/01) to delete AOL members if they can't learn to use Plain Text. Navy has over 740 AOL members. Were we to delete them all or only the computer illiterate? Our Mission is to help members not banish them due to their choice of Service Providers. Meanwhile AOL 6.0 members cannot easily participate in our lists but are still solicited with vigor each time operating funds are required.
2. From day one, three years ago, we have asked to be subscribed to the WP Parent counterpart lists in order to observe parent list operations on the West Point side. We have never been allowed to even read the posts on the WP Parents lists nor access their archives, even though it would have been of enormous value during our formation and growth to have this cross-reference material available to the Navy Moderators. Instead these requests were ignored.
3. We have been denied simple FTP access to our OWN archives on "defiant" as well as cgi functions on "argon" which are necessary to implement certain common web site features like password protection. This includes our web site's Postcards, Chat Room and Classifieds Advertisements which were all forced to be hosted on external servers to enable this functionality.
4. Dick Price promised us our own server over eighteen months ago. Thus far, we are still sharing argon with no fewer than 69 other virtual users such as darrow.org, r-day.org and armysailing.com. While originally offered free Domain registration and hosting for our local Parents' Club web sites, the offer was summarily retracted after we made the announcement to our Parents Clubs. We were forced to advise our PC's that they must settle for sub-domain hosting even though full domain name service is made available to many West Point organizations. In light of Navy's donations of almost $30,000 in the past year, we find it incomprehensible that a mere $19/year DNS registration fee could not have been funded for as many as twenty clubs, even though, we currently have requests for this service from fewer than six PC's.
Navy web authors, who require access to their sub-domains, waited months for User Name and Password assignments even though this is a two minute addition to the server's User files and costs absolutely nothing to implement.
5. The Archive Search Index is never up to date for our Navy Lists. There have been times when this Search Index was as much as three months out of date. Repeated requests for a remedy have fallen on deaf ears even though all that needs done is to set up the cron table to make it happen on a weekly basis or every time the archives generate a digest volume.
6. Our SysOp complained to us and Advisors (email of 8/8/01) that Navy is the ONLY list that changes the password so often and this give her fits with people always asking for the latest password. This wouldn't happen if WP-Org provided us with our own CGI script for searching our separate archives. Instead, our members are forced to use the same CGI script written for the other WP lists which has a link to "Feedback@west-point.org" coded into the page. A separate CGI file that is a clone of the WP script but with a link to "owner-navy-usna" is a minor copy & edit function that would take only a few minute to make this problem vanish. This simple solution would have directed all password or archive usage questions to the Navy Moderators and completely taken the SysOp out of this burdensome loop, thus freeing up more of her time to administer the system instead of answering queries from forgetful or newbie USNA-Net members.
7. Duplicating messages continued to be a problem again this past summer. Our problem with this bug was exacerbated by the refusal of the SysOp to even investigate the problem until it became a problem on an Army list. Until then, we were told to educate our members in the proper usage of our lists despite the fact that this was most likely a "timing problem" in the sendmail remailer. When the problem was finally resolved the first time it occurred, not a word was said about what caused it, how we might avoid it in the future, or how it was fixed.
8. Several service outages continued to plague our servers with the most serious being in early June (7/5/2001 @ 1400 until 7/6/2001 @ 1530). This particular occurrence was during the height of our new Parent sign up period when we were experiencing over 1,100 hits to the USNA-Net web site in each of the previous three days. It would be assumed that our web site was unavailable or defunct by over one thousand web visitors during this interruption. While such things may be beyond the control of WP-Org, to our knowledge, there has yet to be an implementation of any contingency plan (Mirror Site) to avoid such prolonged outages in the future. For a web based business to accept total cessation of service like this with a shrug of the shoulders, is simply unacceptable.
Additional service interruptions occurred again in July during the height of Plebe Summer when our members most need our services. The excuse that "it's raining in Texas, expect outages." is simply unacceptable. When queried, our Administration countered that our service is up and running 99% of the time. On an annual basis, however, this still allows for almost 88 hours of outages annually. That's more than three an a half days of non-service.
9. Also this past summer, our web site had an incident wherein the entire contents of a major portion of our web site was lost into cyberspace. Our Parents Handbook, its sub-directory and all of its contents were noticed to be missing from the server with no explanation offered by the SysOp except that perhaps the Navy Webmaster had accidentally erased the contents and the sub-directory. Not only was that insulting but the matter was never addressed any further. WP-Org back-ups are maintained on only a weekly basis and had we not had a local copy of the information, this extensive document consisting of many, many pages of valuable reference information would have been lost forever to our members.
Reports of vanishing Member Lists have been remedied by the SysOp advising list moderators to maintain their own back-up copies of their lists. This is simply unacceptable for an organization which purports to be a professional Internet service provider.
Budgetary Issues...
10. We feel we can no longer entrust the continued operation of the Navy listservers to WP-Org in light of its current and anticipated fiscal situation. Fund raising has taken significantly larger percentages of our time while producing shrinking average donations despite Navy's increased participation. While donating more than 20% of the requested fund-raising goal, Navy has repeatedly been told to wait for necessary utilities and functionality with regard to its needs.
11. WP-Org's current annual budget of nearly $200,000 is not thought of as anything unusual. Attempting to raise almost One Hundred Thousand Dollars every six months has become a heavy burden to its members. What once started out as a strictly volunteer organization with modest monetary needs for communications equipment and Internet access has grown to include two paid staffers who's salaries consume the majority of our funds making it necessary to begin fund raising just three and a half months after the conclusion of the previous fund drive.
12. The last minute and apparently arbitrary decision, just days before the launch of FD9, to hire another full time employee boosted our six month need from $65K to $95K, committing the entire organization to an additional $60,000 in annual payroll liabilities. We question the prudence of this decision in light of the fact that obtaining the 501(c)3 status did not bring in significant matching funds as promised when the goal increase was explained to WP-Org's membership.
13. During the past Fund Drive, many of our Navy members voiced resentment to us over the "not so friendly" competition instigated between Army and Navy parents by the SysOp during drive after it was noticed that the Army parents were beginning to lag behind in donations. Many of Navy's members thought this tactic was a contrived mechanism to shame donations from parents while so many of the Army Alumni, who benefit the most from WP-Org, sat back and ignored the pleas for funds.
14. Despite many requests and ample time to accomplish the simple changes in the on-line donation form, WP-Org still managed to confound logic in FD9 with extra, unnecessary donor categories so as to make easy designation almost impossible without specific emailed instruction to our donors to check ONLY the Navy designation. The confusion over these mutiple categories was noted and a remedy was promised at the conclusion of FD8. Nonetheless, the same confusing format was hastily thrown together again for FD9. We found it inconceivable that WP-Org's administration did not take the time to make it as simple and convenient as possible for all members to contribute. Fund Raising is critical to its survival and should have been given it fullest attention and its highest priority.
15. With funds so difficult to extract from members, we also have difficulty understanding how WP-Org would even consider such purchases as Brighton software for the exorbitant sum of $13,500 to do automated mailings for future Fund Drives when volunteers could be recruited for some of the added tasks of sorting out donors from secondary solicitations after they have donated. Moreover, the creative use of an "extra" Corps list, from which member's names could be deleted upon receipt of a donation, is all that would be needed and would cost nothing.
Additional Issues...
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, there is an issue of which we have made no previous mention. Last Spring, three new members were added to WP-Org's Board of Advisors. Yet, Navy still has no representation on this Board. This means that our members have consistently had no input (except via an almost defunct Parent List) to such matters as administrative decisions, budget considerations or planning issues. As a group who provided a significant portion of the annual budget each and every time we had been called upon, it seemed only proper that we should at least have a proportionate voice in the operation of the Organization.
Since it was not felt by the Advisors that a representative from the Navy side of the fence was necessary on the Board, it finally became obvious that Navy would be better served by moving its members and web services to a more responsive environment.
We wish your organization well in its future endeavors. It is regrettable that this could not have concluded differently but frankly, we have found that duplicate services are easily obtained for 1/6 of the amount of our membership's annual donations with consistent and almost immediate response to our needs and guaranteed uninterrupted service.
Fair winds and following seas...
Mike and Sandi Zets
Moderators - USNA-Net Listservers
Webmasters - www.USNA-Net.org