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Some of you who volunteered before January 20, 2002 may not have 
received the first message sent to this list.  This was due to some e-
mail address formatting errors we found after the message was sent.  
Our apologies. If you would like a copy of the first message please 
let me know.

Again, I want to thank all of you for volunteering for this project. 
As of this writing we have 4,854 volunteers. We are perhaps one of 
largest totally volunteer project on the Internet -- keep up the good 
work.

WHAT IS A SNAFU?

A snafu is where you slowly move a very popular site over the course 
of several months. It is where all links at the old location go to 
the new location. Next step is to have redirects up to automatically 
go to the new site and in 30 days or less your old service provider 
removes the ability for visitors to go to the site with a message 
called "FORBIDDEN." This is what happened to Random Acts.

I advised all the volunteers who received the last global message of 
the new URL, and to please change all links they may have on their 
own websites or signature lines. Am very happy to see most have 
complied.  Please double check to see if you have changed the URL for 
Random Acts to http://www.raogk.org/

If any of you are on mailing lists and happen to see the old URL 
given out, I would appreciate it if you could send a message 
correcting it. Thanks a bunch.

PROFESSIONALS USING VOLUNTEERS

We have been notified that there are some professional research 
people (not necessarily genealogists) who are using RAOGK volunteers 
to get information and then in turn charging their clients for their 
work.  Presently I only know of one state so far that this is taking 
place, Georgia.

It seems like a site called "Search International, LLC" may or may 
not be sending their "searchers" to RAOGK to get information.  
However, an alert librarian in Cobb County, GA, alerted a volunteer 
of this situation:


"[The volunteer] talked to the librarian at the Georgia Room (Local 
Hist./Genealogy) at the downtown Central/Marietta branch of the Cobb 
County Public Library. She had retained a letter to the Georgia Room 
from an Ann E. Fuller of Search International, LLC, requesting that 
they do some extensive genealogical research for her. This letter was 
dated Nov. 26, 2001. The librarian wrote back saying this was beyond 
their scope of the amount and kind of research they can do. Then at 
about the same time the librarian recalled seeing a volunteer 
researcher come in to do the exact same lookups based on an exactly-
worded  "request" through RAOGK from someone named Sarah or Susanne 
(as they recalled, no documentation) at the same email address. So 
putting these two events together, the librarian surmised that the 
people behind these two requests were trying to use RAOGK and free 
library requests to fulfill their commercial research needs, which 
they then would charge their customers for."

So if you receive a request from someone with an email address with 
the isp of @searchint.com, please just forward to your state 
coordinator. We'll handle it from there.

COMMON COURTESY

This site is based on people helping people, and also a little "Good 
Book" philosophy -- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto 
you."

The amount of e-mail we have received since the last message was sent 
out regarding this has been reduced, not eliminated but reduced.  
Let's keep up the good work. Thanks.

NOT GETTING PAID FOR SERVICES

Many of you have written to me regarding not getting paid after 
completing and passing along what was requested of you. There is no 
way we can force folks to pay your expenses. I have suggested to 
those who have written to me to try PayPal.  PayPal 
(http://www.paypal.com) is an online payment facility. You can send 
and/or receive payment from anyone with an e-mail address. Yes they 
charge you a fee to use their services, but the fee is minimal. If 
you decide to go this route, ask for 1/2 of your cost. I say this 
because it works both ways, a requester may think "I'm going to send 
money and get nothing back." At least you will have 1/2 of your fees 
if you don't get anything else.  MOST people when they encounter a 
site like RAOGK are truly honest people, but there *are* some bad 
apples.

A HINT OF THINGS TO COME

Moving Random Acts onto a new server has its plus side. Besides 
having our own domain name and not being called "RootsWeb's Random 
Acts of Genealogical Kindness" any longer, we are now capable of and 
will be enhancing the site for ease of navigation and updating of the 
site.

The number of volunteers we have now were beyond any expectations we 
could have imagined when this site first went online. Keeping up with 
all the comings and goings and changes has become a real challenge 
(but a welcome one). Even though we have set up security measures to 
prevent e-mail harvesting from RAOGK, we have taken another step to 
prevent this all together.

Available soon will be a search engine. For instance, if you need 
research done in Tennessee, you would select Tennessee from a drop 
down menu then enter the county you need, and hit enter. What will 
appear next is all the researchers in that particular county. The 
international sites, including Canada, searching will come at a later 
date.

THAT IS ALL FOLKS

Until next month.


RAOGK Staff

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URL's on RAOGK you should have bookmarked:
Volunteer's FAQ page: http://www.raogk.org/info.htm

Section Coordinators list: http://www.raogk.org/vol.htm

Changing of information (change your "act of kindness"; e-mail address change or needing to be removed): http://www.raogk.org/change.html