GCD Board Votes - 2006

January 2006

MOTION: The Board of Directors of the GCD hereby instructs Jon Lovstad to immediately restore to RH all rights, privileges, and access to the GGD and all its components, including free and unmoderated access to all GCD discussion lists (excepting all Board lists), and to refrain from altering such access and privileges hereafter unless so instructed by this Board.

It appears as though this Motion never went to a vote. The name of the individual in question is abbreviated here but is available in full in the original archives (http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-board/files)

There were no votes in January.

February 2006

There were no votes or motions in February.

March 2006

MOTION: Findings in regards to the publisher/imprints subcommittee. If you've been following the discussions on the tech lists you'll see that the planning is already being geared towards our findings. Basically we have decided that we require a third field to further define publisher relationships. We determined that the structure should consist of the current publisher field (now referred to as the indicia publisher field) and the imprint field with a new field called the publisher house field. This new field would be used to connect related publishers, while allowing us to use the indicia publisher field to record what was in the book itself. For example a Marvel comics house field would then contain Atlas Comics, Marvel Comics and Bard as indicia publishers. We also all seem to feel that we can go no further than this at this time and would like to wait for the new database structure to be implemented before we were to go ahead and split publishers into houses. So I would like to propose that we make the findings of the subcommittee official GCD policy. I would also like to propose that the subcommittee be officially disbanded at this time and reconvened if/when the changes are made to the database. The subcommittee was chaired by Lou Mazzella and Matt Gore.

There were no votes in March.

April 2006

There were no votes or motions in April. A brief mention of calling on a vote for the Motion regarding publishers and imprints was put forward.

May 2006

VOTE: Publisher/Imprints Revision Subcommittee. A vote on the Motion regarding publishers and imprints was called.

PUBLISHER/IMPRINTPUBLISHER/IMPRINT REVISION SUBCOMMITTEE:

1. FINDINGS OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE

9 votes: Yes, the findings of the subcommittee should be made official GCD policy 0 votes: No, they findings of the subcommittee should not be made official GCD policy 0 votes: Abstention

2. DISBANDING THE SUBCOMMITTEE

9 votes: Yes, the subcommittee can be officially disbanded 0 votes: Yes, the subcommittee can not be officially disbanded 0 votes: Abstention

The results are clear: 100% of all voters agrees on the findings and allows the sub-committee to be officially disbanded.

MOTION: TPB Sub-Committee: The proposal is by Board member Mike Nielsen:

Quote:"After some discussion on the editor list we are asking the board to approve a committee to try to form some decision on how TPB's will be dealt with in the GCD. Among the items we will be looking at: 1) Are Hardcover and Softcover issues the same issue or does the change of format warrant multiple issues and/or series to be created. 2) How to handle TPB's that become part of a series. For instance, items like the Cerebus Trade paperbacks (can be seen at http://www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=3216 ). Does each TPB warrant it's own series or are they lumped together in one index. 3) Possibly other topics that are revealed in the discussion of these topics.

I would like to see this committee have at least one member of the tech list who has in-depth knowledge of what they are planning for the new DB structure to make sure we are compliant with what they are doing." (vote was held near the end of May, with the results being announced later in June)

June 2006

MOTION: That the board endorse the donations page and ads. (written for the lasso website, the actual text was not part of the archived discussions)

MOTION: That the board endorse a resolution stating that it is our intention to seek incorporation.

VOTE: TPB Subcommittee

All nine GCD Board members voted on the subject.

TPB SUB-COMMITTEE:

9 votes: Yes, we should set up a tpb sub-committee 0 votes: No, we should not set up a tpb sub-commitee 0 votes: Abstention

That is a 100% yes.

Mike Nielsen will follow up on this and may send out a status report.

MOTION: Data use policy. You can use GCD Data but you must credit the GCD and the original indexer as the source. This should be displayed prominently on our website under a link labeled something like "license for use" or "data use policy".

MOTION: Donations & Disclaimer Since July 2006, Jon Lovstad is offcially accepting donations for the GCD project. Due to some concerns, he has added a disclaimer to the donations page: Quote:"NB! Please note that you are NOT subscribing to the GCD itself. The GCD is free of use online and a donation is not a kind of membership or other affiliation with the core project. A donation subscription is a recurring way of contributing to keep the site up and running. It does not come with any other rights or promises than that it will help keep the site running."Unquote

Please vote on the following subjects with an "X":

1. ACCEPTING DONATIONS:

( ) Yes, it should be possible for Jon Lovstad to accept donations for GCD related purpose

( ) No, it shuld not be possible for Jon Lovstad to accept donations for GCD related purpose

( ) Abstention

2. VOTING RIGHTS:

( ) Yes, we should make it an official policy that donators will not get membership of and/or voting rights it for the GCD.

( ) No, we should not make this an official policy, I have another idea: (please elaborate) _____________________________

( ) Abstention

This vote was called to a halt before it was finished due to some wording problems, but the result of the votes before it was halted was: VOTE: Donations & Disclaimer- Results

Hello Board,

deadline of the last vote was on July 23rd. Six GCD Board members voted on the subjects (Ray, Matthias, Lou, Mike, Will, Per). One of them only voted for the first part (Ray) - I count this a non-vote and not abstention.

1. ACCEPTING DONATIONS:

6 votes: Yes, it should be possible for Jon Lovstad to accept donations for GCD related purpose 0 votes: No, it should not be possible for Jon Lovstad to accept donations for GCD related purpose 0 votes: Abstention

2. VOTING RIGHTS:

5 votes: Yes, we should make it an official policy that donators will not get membership of and/or voting rights it for the GCD.

0 votes: No, we should not make this an official policy, I have another idea: (please elaborate) _____________________________

0 votes: Abstention

MOTION: "The GCD Board of directors is pleased to approve the inclusion of solicitation of donations to Jon Lovstad, re-paying him for his GCD-related expenses. Further, the Board approves the inclusion of small, non-intrusive ads on database search results pages."

MOTION: "Resolved, the Board of Directors of the Grand Comicbook Database intends to pursue creation of the Grand Comicbook Database Foundation, a non-profit, corporate entity to retain ownership of the Grand Comicbook Database. In order to create this entity, official by-laws will have to be written and a location for incorporation chosen."

MOTION: Wording of the disclaimer: "NB! Please note that you are NOT subscribing to the GCD itself. The GCD is free of use online and a donation is not a kind of membership or other affiliation with the core project. A donation subscription is a recurring way of contributing to keep the site up and running. It does not come with any other rights or promises than that it will help keep the site running." I propose that it be amended to read: "NB! Please note that you are NOT subscribing to the GCD itself. The GCD is free for use online and a donation is not a kind of membership or any other affiliation with the core project. At present, donation subscription is a recurring way of contributing to keep the site up and running. It does not entitle the donor to rights or privileges. It is merely an acknowledgment of the expenses incurred by our technical staff."

The above three Motions were called to Vote with a deadline of August 6, 2006.

August 2006

1. APPROVAL OF JON LOVSTAD'S DONATIONS AND ADS:

"The GCD Board of directors is pleased to approve the inclusion of solicitation of donations to Jon Lovstad, re-paying him for his GCD-related expenses. Further, the Board approves the inclusion of small, non-intrusive ads on database search results pages."

9 Yes 0 No 0 Abstention

2. VOTING RIGHTS/DISCLAIMER ON WEBSITE:

Following is the language of the disclaimer at present:

"NB! Please note that you are NOT subscribing to the GCD itself. The GCD is free of use online and a donation is not a kind of membership or other affiliation with the core project. A donation subscription is a recurring way of contributing to keep the site up and running. It does not come with any other rights or promises than that it will help keep the site running."

I [Tony Rose] propose that it be amended to read: "NB! Please note that you are NOT subscribing to the GCD itself. The GCD is free for use online and a donation is not a kind of membership or any other affiliation with the core project. At present, donation subscription is a recurring way of contributing to keep the site up and running. It does not entitle the donor to rights or priveleges. It is merely an acknowledgement of the expenses incurred by our technical staff."

9 Yes 9 No 9 Abstention

3. INTENTION TO SEEK INCORPORATION

"I [Tony Rose] further move that the Board endorse a resolution stating that it is our intention to seek incorporation."

The Wording for the resolution is as follows: "Resolved, the Board of Directors of the Grand Comicbook Database intends to pursue creation of the Grand Comicbook Database Foundation, a non-profit, corporate entity to retain ownership of the Grand Comicbook Database. In order to create this entity, official by-laws will have to be written and a location for incorporation chosen."

9 Yes 0 No 0 Abstention

DATA-DUMP COMMITTEE

A committee should be established which prepares regular data-dumps from the current ONLINE INDEX database. This committee should come up with a suggestion regarding controlling the data flow and licencing. Details to be established by the committee which should be chaired by the data coordinator. DATA-DUMP COMMITTEE

"A committee should be established which prepares regular data-dumps from the current ONLINE INDEX database. This committee should come up with a suggestion regarding controlling the data flow and licencing. Details to be established by the committee which should be chaired by the data coordinator."

9 Yes 0 No 0 Abstention

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

100% approval for this one.