CURRENT STATS

Last month: 4659
This month: 4742

New: 131
Left: 64
*Staff removals: 13

Kudos for August: 48

*Staff removals are those folks whose e-mail address has been reported
bouncing and confirmed or volunteers who, over the course of trying many
times, did not respond back to requesters or staff.


WITHOUT A HITCH?

Well almost. Our conversion over to the new RAOGK server and the new
way of submitting requests was almost seamless. At least the glitches
we found are/were not *earth shattering* in nature, and fairly easy to
fix. We have only had one complaint and I believe that complaint was
rectified (the complainer never returned my message to them, so am
assuming that their question/complaint was answered sufficiently).

One of the problems we found you will probably see on the requests
you are receiving. Before each quote ("), apostophe (') and question
mark (?) you will see a forward slash (/). This slash in programming
is used as an "escape" or "ignore next" indicator. Many non-alpha
characters found on the keyboard are used in program coding, so the
forward slash is used to inform the program to ignore the character
that appears right after the slash. We are working to find out a
solution.


A NEW TREND SEEMS TO BE SETTING IN

Many volunteers have indicated that they receive requests from folks
who do not seem to read what they have indicated they would do for
their "act of kindness." This has always been a complaint from time
to time, but the increase of these requests seem to be on the rise.
Also, the staff seems to be receiving quite a few e-mails, more than
usual, of the same type.

Folks, I don't know how to fix this for you (or staff). At the top
of each page that lists volunteers, I have indicated NOT to ask a
volunteer to do something not indicated in their "act of kindness."
I have links back to the Frequently Asked Questions for Requesters
in the same area. Also within that top set of paragraphs I have the
statement that if there are no volunteers for the area where needed
to come back again from time to time, as we have people signing up
daily to volunteer, and one might be for the area they need. If the
more than 10 messages a month staff receives asking what to do if
there is no volunteer for such and such area is any indication of
what the volunteers are receiving, we really do sympathize with
you.

By the way, there is also a page of FAQ's for volunteers
(http://www.raogk.org/faq-vols.htm) in case you have some questions
as a volunteer.

For those of you going on a 3 day weekend (USA) or on vacation or
holiday take care out there on the roads.

Until next month,

RAOGK Staff