Joe Offer wrote:

Not particularly, RJM, but I'm a good researcher and I'm good at the tech stuff and I know the people and the resources.

Which is exactly why we asked Joe to be part of the Board.

The technical end of the Ballad Index is basically... me. I make all decisions about what information files with which song, e.g., and I decide which things go in and which go out. That has been the case for the entire almost-thirty-year time the Ballad Index has been in existence; there is no way we could consult a group about every one of hundreds of thousands of versions of tens of thousands of songs!

But there are other decisions to be made ("Is it really necessary to have a Microsoft Word version?"). Soon after I started this project, I assembled a Board of Advisors, and I consulted frequently with the Ballad-L mailing list. But only one of my five original advisors is still around, and the Ballad-L list is much quieter than it used to be. Joe reads much more of Mudcat than I do; he can get a better sense of what people want than I can. And so we asked him to join the Board. And he showed his gratitude by voting down the very first proposal I made after joining the Board. :-p

I should add that this is not an actual corporation; there is no "staff" except me, no compensation (in fact, it's a money pit), and what the Board does is just deal with technical problems (e.g. "They took our site away!" or "The search engine doesn't work") and philosophical issues. We could sure use some younger people. But I take what I get :-). I'm glad to have Joe's perspective.