As most of you know... boergoats.com is a private sole-proprietorship owned by KLS Boer Goats which, in turn, is owned by Keith & Lucinda Smith of Fort Worth, Texas, USA. There is no particular registry affiliation either implied or stated - check our previous editorials. The services of boergoats.com include web site hosting, web site design, web site maintenance, and Internet advertising. Boergoats.com currently has 232 clients. One of the several institutional clients that we serve is the American Boer Goat Association (ABGA). We don't "freelance" on any of our clients' web sites. Each client submits information for inclusion on their web site and we consult on the best method of presenting it. One of the conditions that I insisted upon before accepting the position as webmaster for the ABGA was that boergoats.com would not consider any submission to the ABGA web site from any individual breeder, including officers or Directors, for inclusion on the ABGA web site. Only submissions from the ABGA office would be posted. This gives boergoats.com an appropriate way to "just say no" should a breeder or officer decide that their personal agenda or product should be promoted on the ABGA web site. A few weeks ago the ABGA office submitted the date and location of the Junior ABGA (JABGA) National Show to be posted on their Events Calendar. The information was posted during the same day and a link was added so that folks could request additional information by sending an email to the ABGA office. (Because of this fiasco the ABGA has since submitted additional information). A week or so later a JABGA advisor sent an email to boergoats.com with the full book on the JABGA show attached... rules, schedule, even a list of hotel contacts in the area of the show. She requested that, since the info on the ABGA site was so limited, would we please add the information to her personal web site so that the JABGA members could download it. We complied. I, too, thought that such info would be helpful to JABGA members - I added a link to the information on her site directly from the boergoats.com Events Schedule. Note that I wrote "the boergoats.com Events Schedule", not "the ABGA Events Calendar". My Monday morning started like most... 600+ emails to sift through; re-gearing my mind to continue the web site design project I was working on the previous Saturday afternoon; and, in general, getting back into the groove of a work week. Then came "THE phone call"! I'm working from memory, here, so please bear with me. The caller, rather embarrassed, told me that someone had complained to the ABGA office about the JABGA info being on a breeder's personal site. The complainer said that that gave the other breeder an unfair marketing advantage. The caller verified that he also knew that boergoats.com was not the ABGA web site but it would be nice if I would remove the information from my client's web site. "No", I said. "That's not my site to monkey with, it's hers". "Well, then would you remove the link between the boergoats.com Events Schedule and her site". "No. Boergoats.com is my site to monkey with and I like the link just where I put it. How about I just display big red letters proclaiming THIS IS NOT THE ABGA WEB SITE"? Somewhere around that point I started getting riled. The complaint was baseless and, worse, the complainer knew it. There was no link from the ABGA Events Calendar to our other client's web site. The only way such a complaint could originate was by the complainer visiting the boergoats.com Events Schedule and following the "more info" link or by visiting our client's site directly. I know for a fact that the complainer fully understands the webmaster/client relationship between boergoats.com and the ABGA - we've discussed it. OK... I've cooled off a little and, to help promote ?harmony? in the family, I've changed the link on the boergoats.com Events Schedule. It now points to copies of the offending files which are stored directly on boergoats.com instead of pointing to the original files located on our other client's personal web site. That complaint was nothing more than another manifestation of the ongoing feud between factions within the ABGA - And the rest of the membership is getting tired of it! Why did I write this editorial? Hopefully the next person who knows better will at least try to remember that boergoats.com isn't spelled anything like abga.org before submitting a complaint to the ABGA. Specially when the content is obviously provided in an effort to make things easier for JABGA members; the youngsters that are the future of this industry. The cynic in me says that I just wasted my time. But, if necessary, I'll let one institutional client go elsewhere for their web site maintenance rather than have the other boergoats.com clients continue to be harrassed. Besides, I've already lost too many prospective clients because they think I'm too tightly wound up with the ABGA and they can't tell the difference in spelling between "boergoats.com" and "abga.org". Annnnnyyy way... to complete the editorial I need to reiterate: When Is BoerGoats.com the ABGA Website? N E V E R ! Keith Smith, Editor & Publisher, BoerGoats.com... the flagship of the GoatGateway.com family of web sites.