Let's keep Slovak Spot going!

[Bill Tee]

While is is very, very sad that Martin is no longer with us, Martin would be very disappointed if we shuttered this list because of him.

You know that chatter on this group has been next to nothing for the last few months.   Let's get back into it!

There is a rich, worldwide heritage of life amoungst the members of this group.  Let's continue to share, discuss, debate and celebrate Slovakia and Slovaks.

Please join in, and tee up a topic.   Keeping up to date is important.   There really are not many people of our heritage or interest here in the U.S. and Canada, for example.   If we can use this as the glue that binds, let's do it!

Thanks from everyone!

[B. J. Licko-Keel]

Bill, thank you for your thoughts. I agree with you completely since, at my age, I no longer have many contacts with friends and relatives who shared my interests in Slovak culture.

I greatly miss Martin's kindness, vast intelligence, and boundless generosity in sharing in so many ways his Slovak presence. Hopefully, the survivors among us can still correspond. It's been a long time since I've have any news about what is actually going on in Slovakia at this time.

Looking forward to hearing from the rest of this group . . .

B. J.

_______________________________________________

B. J. Licko-Keel (BJ...@aol.com)

Count your blessings, not your woes,

Count your friends, not your foes.

(Traditional Irish Blessing)

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[Julie Michutka]

For what it’s worth—the folks in the Slovak World group—a Yahoo group—are trying to figure out what to do about the new and limited direction that Yahoo is taking with groups. So far, the options being discussed are creating a Facebook group (but not all members are on, or wish to be on, Facebook) or moving to Slovak Spot.

~ Julie Michutka

[Julie Michutka]

Sorry, I wrote the wrong group name in my previous post: It’s Slovak *Roots* folks who are discussing joining us. Apologies for the error! ~ Julie

On Oct 18, 2019, at 11:43 AM, Bill Tee <bill.ta...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dennis Ragan]

I'm a little confused here because the discussion seems to have shifted from slovak-spot (this group) to Slovak World and Slovak Roots.  As this is the "slovak-spot" google group that had been moderated by Professor Votruba, I want to mention efforts to keep this group alive because, to my knowledge, we do not have a moderator.  If someone was successfully able to become the moderator, please let me (us) know.  Ben Sorenson and I communicated months ago about the possibly of co-moderating the Slovak-Spot group, and I contacted Google about doing this (evidently, it is -- or was then --possible).  It's my understanding that by not having a moderator, we cannot add new members -- and there are probably other reasons why we should have a moderator.  I did not receive a response from google previously, but will try again.    

[James Dubelko]

I don't participate much in these discussions, so perhaps take what I write with a grain of salt.  But, has any thought been given to finding a moderator for this Google Group in Slovakia?  My experience--I come from the Cleveland, Ohio, area--is that there is not much interest in Slovak culture or history today among younger Americans.  Most of the immigration of Slovaks to America took place circa 1880-1920.  That means, for today's young Americans, if they have a Slovak immigrant ancestor, he or she is probably a great or great-great grandparent.  And the typical American isn't much interested about the culture or history of that distant of an ancestor.  However, when I was doing research at the Slovak Institute in Cleveland in 2013, I got the impression that young scholars in Slovakia are very interested in the immigration of Slovaks to America.  So maybe that's the direction in which this group should look.

Jim Dubelko

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[Julie Michutka]

Dennis, I was the one who brought up Slovak World and Slovak Roots, to alert the members of Slovak Spot to a discussion occurring elsewhere (on S-R) that might have an impact on this group. The commonality is membership and what our group is about and how to keep it going—presently and potentially.

My apologies if my tagging the S-R info onto the discussion about where we as a group want to go caused confusion.

Best,

Julie

[Ben Sorensen]

Please do! I would gladly share this with you, Dennis.

Používateľ Dennis Ragan <drag...@gmail.com> nedeľa 20. októbra 2019 napísal:

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[Julie Wininger]

I would love to see this forum continue. One area in which Dr. Votruba excelled was in his knowledge of the history of the area that is now Slovakia. I am currently writing a novel (based on a true story) that starts right after "The Compromise." I would love if this forum had an expert in the history of that era.

Julie 

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[John Šofranko]

Mostly a reader here but wholeheartedly support Dennis and Ben for co-moderators. I moderate another Google (my retiree) group and know that co or multiple moderators is possible.

I also note that Yahoo groups give off an air of impending extinction. And I don't use Facebook.

Keep Slovak Spot alive. If you can work out the issue with Google, please do.

[Dennis Ragan]

Thanks, John.  I tried -- after a good bit of online searching -- to determine how to have a new moderator appointed to a Google group in a situation like ours.  I finally found what appeared to be the right channel.  However, it's been several days now since I emailed Google with my request, but so far no response.  And there is no phone number or chat available that might make a conversation possible about this.  I also had tried in 2018 and never received a response.  John, if you as a moderator of a Google group, have any suggestions or avenues to suggest, I would love to hear them!  D'akujem.

Dennis   

[Bill Tarkulich]

I have led two groups where the moderator had disappeared. One was a genealogy grop. I believe it was led by a woman named Maura. If I recall it was a Yahoo group. I took it on myself to get ownership changed. At that time I had to have a vote majority of the group members and be able to document it to submit a request to have the owner changed.They said they couldn't change the owner but they would be willing to add me as an administrator. That accomplished fortunately I was able to manage the group from their.I believe I also needed to document that I couldn't get through on e-mail to the group owned.
It took a couple of months before I got an affirmation response knighting me as an admin.

Since that time I've always insisted there be at least 2 administrators at all times. This applies to not only discussion groups but also to websites.

It's too easy for people to disappear. And frankly most of the people on these discussion groups tend to be older in age and we know where that's going…

I have no idea how Google groups works. However we might have an angle just to get a coal moderator assigned. Return Dennis what are the steps that you've identified are necessary to change ownership? Alternately changing to a CO administrator?

[Dr. Q]

Yes, I remember the mess we had with Slovak-Roots (also with the old Slovak World when it left the Zvolen server and was form by Greg Kopchak [who also started the now dead It's All Relative iarelative.com]), but Bill managed to become a moderator.  Since then the S-R group has always had three moderators.  S-R is now discussing where to go.  Facebook has been mentioned as well as joining Slovak Spot.  But until Slovak Spot can get a moderator/administrator who can approve new members; nothing will happen.  I suggested that S-R start a new Google Groups Slovak-Roots and have Slovak Spot migrate to it.  This would solve both the attenuation of the yahoo groups functions and the lack of an administrator for Slovak Spot.

Dr. "Q"

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[Bill Tarkulich]

The only real way to do  this is to get our own discussion group software hosted on an independent surfer that we pay for.   I've done it before and it's not hard. But again it takes having multiple people involved in its management.

Bill

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[El Ch]

I'm all for keeping up -- I haven't been doing much genealogy research lately though. 

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[Ron M]

I am going through some fun trying to set up one of the local ski patrol's on Google Groups, which demands much more than just communication to cover their needs, Yahoo worked well for 11 years. Next we will check into G Suite for Non-Profits ...

On Slovak Spot, has anyone contacted the Slovak Department at U of Pittsburgh? If they can find the I.D. and Password that Martin used for Slovak Spot?  If so, they can designate a trusted person to take over.  

I just created a Google Group for the Ski Patrol for testing, and as I gathered in previous Yahoo Moderators, I promoted them to Google Managers  and also created our new owner I.D., and shared that with trusted managers - and then 'demoted' myself from Owner to Manager. So three of us have access to the Owner. The Owner is essentially our "Betty Crocker", an I.D. that will outlive us and serve the Ski Patrol as long as they need and Google provides the service.

So the trick would be to contact the Slovak Department at U Pitt. 

At the same time try to get them to put Martin's pages back on line for a few months so we regular people can go on line to each of his pages and "Print to PDF" (one per page) on our computers, thus saving those beautiful, so well written pages of information.

Ron

On Sunday, October 27, 2019 at 3:23:21 PM UTC-8, Bill Tarkulich wrote:

The only real way to do  this is to get our own discussion group software hosted on an independent surfer that we pay for.   I've done it before and it's not hard. But again it takes having multiple people involved in its management.

Bill

On Sun, Oct 27, 2019 at 11:38 AM -0400, "'Dr. Q' via Slovak Spot" <slova...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Yes, I remember the mess we had with Slovak-Roots (also with the old Slovak World when it left the Zvolen server and was form by Greg Kopchak [who also started the now dead It's All Relative iarelative.com]), but Bill managed to become a moderator.  Since then the S-R group has always had three moderators.  S-R is now discussing where to go.  Facebook has been mentioned as well as joining Slovak Spot.  But until Slovak Spot can get a moderator/administrator who can approve new members; nothing will happen.  I suggested that S-R start a new Google Groups Slovak-Roots and have Slovak Spot migrate to it.  This would solve both the attenuation of the yahoo groups functions and the lack of an administrator for Slovak Spot.

Dr. "Q"

On Thursday, October 24, 2019, 11:38:33 AM EDT, Bill Tarkulich <bill.t...@iabsi.com> wrote:

I have led two groups where the moderator had disappeared. One was a genealogy grop. I believe it was led by a woman named Maura.  If I recall it was a Yahoo group.  I took it on myself to get ownership changed. At that time I had to have a vote majority of the group members and be able to document it to submit a request to have the owner changed.They said they couldn't change the owner but they would be willing to add me as an administrator. That accomplished fortunately I was able to manage the group from their.I believe I also needed to document that I couldn't get through on e-mail to the group owned.
It took a couple of months before I got an affirmation response knighting me as an admin.

Since that time I've always insisted there be at least 2 administrators at all times. This applies to not only discussion groups but also to websites.

It's too easy for people to disappear. And frankly most of the people on these discussion groups tend to be older in age and we know where that's going…

I have no idea how Google groups works. However we might have an angle just to get a coal moderator assigned. Return Dennis what are the steps that you've identified are necessary to change ownership? Alternately changing to a CO administrator?

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[krysiulek]

Dear Group!

Are these Professor Votruba's pages that you were referring to? They seem still to be up:

http://www.pitt.edu/~votruba/qsonhist/qsonhist.html

Which others were there, if not? 

Greetings from Kristína

[Dennis Ragan]

(Posted in the wrong topic area previously ... ) Excellent idea, Ron. I'll contact Chris Metil at the university' Slavic department before she retires.  Just yesterday I tried for over 90 minutes to find another way to get to someone at google about this and was headed down the G suite route before I backed out because I couldn't set myself up as a company with the info they wanted to make this happen.   Even then, all that might have done would have possibly opened up access to their forums to find a way to name a new moderator.  Since you're "in" now, might you look around the G suite's forums for any info in how to replace a moderator.  Regarding Martin's pages on the Slavic department's section of the Pitt web site, Ben Sorensen was working in that. 

Dennis 

[Dennis Ragan]

Followup -- I did reach Chris Metil at the University of Pittsburgh, although she has already retired. She suggested we check with Marcela Michálková, the new Director of the Slovak Studies Program, to see if she might have Martin's administrator user name and password for Slovak Spot. I'll be at the Slovak Heritage Festival on Sunday and hope to talk to her there about this.  

[Bill Tarkulich]

I dont  Know anything about G suite but perhaps if you need incorporating information May be someone at the University would be willing to sponsor the site at least temporarily

Bill

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[Dennis Ragan]

In answer to a question posed by Helen -- Marcela is Martin's replacement. She also teaches in the Slovak summer program.  Her resume is impressive --  You can see profile page on Pitt's web site at https://www.slavic.pitt.edu/people/marcela-mich-lkov