CURRENT STATS

Last month: 4742
This month: 4649

New: 115
Left: 82
*Staff removals: 14

*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. Staff also removed
113 volunteers from the site due to returns (user/host unknown and Not
Accepting Mail from this sender) when the August newsletter was sent out.

Kudos for September: 58 (http://www.raogk.org/guestbook/)


BRICKWALLS

We all have them within our genealogy research. However, they can also
be present when running a site and trying to get people to follow
directions. This brickwall is present with both the requesters and
about 1% of the volunteers.

The requesters. We have no control over (unless they are volunteers
and they see themselves in this message). Many are still writing to
every volunteer with the same request within the same county. We've
had a couple of long time volunteers remove themselves this month
stating this as a reason; they are very tired of wasting their time
when they could be helping someone else. I was hoping with the new
system this would be cut down in the frequency of this happening,
it may have, but it is still occurring. Folks, I have yet to figure
out how to fix this.

The volunteers. All we can do is keep on reminding you of procedures
and hope that eventually the 1% who still do it 'my way' will
understand the reasoning of why we ask you do it 'our way.' <grin>

***When you receive a request, you *need* to respond back to the
requester within a reasonable time frame whether you can honor their
request or not. Two big reasons for doing this:

1. The new system relies on the fact that the requester has typed
in their e-mail address correctly. If you go ahead and do what is
requested of you, send it off to the requester and it bounces back
because the e-mail address is wrong -- you've wasted your time.

We cannot help you when this happens, as we do not keep a log of
the requests. You might go ahead and write to us and let us know
that you tried to contact the requester but the address bounced.
That way we have a record that you tried if the requester should
write in complaining they never heard from you.

2. Courtesy. If the shoe was on the other foot, would you not want
to know that your request was received and that it can be honored?


***We DO NOT RESEARCH THE LIVING. ***
There are just too many quacks in this world to possibly put someone
in jeopardy by giving out this information. Footnote on this is if
the names of the living are contained within documents of the deceased
(such as an obituary) that cannot be helped. Some will argue that
information that may be requested is in the public domain (births,
marriages, divorces, deaths) and therefore 'okay' to get this
information. My argument is that since it is in the public domain,
let the requester find it for themselves, or ask the living person
this question on their own.

It all boils down to COURTESY. If the shoe was on the other foot,
would you want someone looking up your vitals behind your back?


MISCONCEPTION

We have been made aware that a few of you think that the site
receives the requests first and then passes them along to the
volunteers. We do not, and do not keep copies of any of the requests
made through the site. We are just a genealogical tool to make it
easier for a researcher to contact a person in their research area
who may be able to find the documents they need.


THANK YOU

Some of you may not hear this enough from the people you have helped,
but the staff at RAOGK want to take this time to thank all of you
for being such a great group of people. I have always stated that
genealogists are the best group of people, ever.

Until next month,

THE STAFF
Bridgett, Michele, Mollie, Val, Bill, Madlyn, Anja
and Doc, the Tech Guru