Dear Fred, obviously people like these shouldn't be turned away ! We occasionally get responses following our welcome mail, which are forwarded to the "helpde-l-team" : most just say "thanks" and don't require any further action; some, however, repeat their genealogical problems - people like Bertille Rascher would be ideal to deal with these requests ! How could that be organised ? You state that you get several mails like this per week :-)), which would be too many to just add them to the existing helpde-l-team (unless we change their aims). How about setting up a "general helpers team", consisting of people like Bertille Rascher ? Any welcome mail responses with detailed questions could be forwarded to them - which would imply that they at least are roughly informed about what's going on in the helpde-l-team. Would there be other sources of requests for this "general" team ? Apart from that there would be a simple advice : just read s.g.g. on a regular basis - and you'll find lots of people looking for help ! Best regards - Wolf ********************************* Wolf W. Seelentag PhD Reherstr. 19, CH-9016 St.Gallen, Switzerland home : phone +41-71-2885121 office: phone +41-71-4942233 fax : +41-71-4942893 e-mail: wolf@swissmail.com ****************************************************** Von: W. Fred Rump An: webpages-l@genealogy.net; genstaff-l@genealogy.net Cc: helpde-l@genealogy.net Betreff: (Fwd) Helping newcomers Datum: Mittwoch, 23. April 1997 17,03 ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 09:06:55 -0400 From: "Bertille G. Rascher" <bgrcntlnj@worldnet.att.net> Organization: Ourselves To: WebMaster@genealogy.net Subject: Helping newcomers I would like to help anyone doing genealogy. I've been working on our family tree for over twenty years. I've found all our German family in the U.S. and Germany. In Germany I've got back to 1632 in Westfalen. Thank you. --------------------------- Does anybody have any ideas as to what to do with these types of posts? In addition to mail to webmaster I get 4 or 5 of these about every week. These are all well meaning people and yet we have no way to capture their good will and possible expertise. My mail comes mostly from the request for volunteers to help with the regional web page development. They don't read the whole message though. I mean I don't know how "Volunteers needed to help with German regional Web-pages" can be made any clearer but I generally have to explain what it means and respond. It's a pain. But I sense that somehow we're missing some people who might be good resources. I thought about another mailing list of volunteers as I assume these people don't fully read sgg. I don't know about this. Anybody have any bright ideas? Fred