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Current Rants and Recent Rambles

01-16-06: Got an Idea or Want to Volunteer?

ClayMates:

If you have a good idea that might improve the list experience the process is to present the idea to the owners of the list. This list, any other list that you might be on.

The reason to present the idea to the owners as opposed to the list at large is that very idea might have been considered and shelved years ago as not workable.

The volunteers of this list have posted 243 posts so far this month on our list COCModSquad. All the posts deal with the services we provide for this list: Tracking library books, updates on Newbie Boxes, listing new donations, sharing input to make the services a quality experience for the list members here as well as for the volunteer who oversees a particular department, and much more.

One thing that most list members here might not know about is the extensive training that goes on before a volunteer can start working for this list or any other CITY-List. All volunteers on all CITY-Lists have to subscribe to CITY-Leaders and to the list for their particular Mod Team.

http://www.city-lists.com/CITY-Leaders/ (needs to be rebuilt 5/25/2013)

That page is an index of documents, which all volunteers for all CITY-Lists have to review before we move on to hands on training. Each volunteer after reading the CL-Index and agreeing in writing that they will abide by the CITY-List philosophy can then get one to one training by someone on their Mod Team. Some times the whole team takes part in helping train a new volunteer. It's a good bonding experience for the team.

Hands on training deals with knowing all the settings behind the scenes: How to change what's seen on the home page, change group setting, how to do searches for list members or posts, how to change the posting status of list members, how the polls, calendar, links, files and photo areas work. Training is done with Yahoo Messenger and training logs get sent to the Mod Team's list. The first training sessions' logs were sent to CITY-Leaders so all new volunteers can read them.

Each CITY-List has a representative to vote on CITY-List wide policy changes and updates in CITY-ListFounders. I'm the representative for the CITY-Leader's list. Denise, our librarian, is the representative for CITY-o-Clay. Changes or additions to policies are discussed there and taken to the Mod Teams by the Reps, where the various teams can discuss amongst themselves how they feel about it. The representative comes back with the result of that discussion by way of a vote. Each Mod Team gets one vote on policy that will be implemented through out the whole CITY-List family. A majority has to be achieved for a policy to be implemented.

When any CITY-List needs more volunteers individual list members will be contacted off list. This does not happen until various candidates for recruitment have been discussed with the Mod Teams. Each member of a Mod Team has to be comfortable with the new volunteer who is coming in to the team. If a candidate agrees to be part of a Mod Team then the person who suggested them in the first place usually takes over the orientation and training.

Surprising as it may seem I've recruited list members who were new to polymer clay. I feel that volunteers who are enthusiastic is more important than they know a ton of stuff and are "oh hum" about it, or worse, impatient with new clayers' questions. The willingness to share the delight of discovery with a new medium with the other new clayers is a decided plus. I've recruited list members before they've been here for three months, just because of their positive energy. But I digress...

All this work insures that all CITY-Lists deal with list members in the same way and are trained regarding behind the scene settings. All policies found on this list will be found on all other CITY-Lists. That being said doing something untoward on one CITY-List gets shared with CITY-ListFounders. There's 17 representatives who share information with their Mod Teams and all news travels fast.

There's a simple reason why this process was created. It was lacking in the list family the Founders were part of before. We needed input on who was going to be on the Mod Team, uniformity of training, shared ownership of the list, input on policy, uniformity of that policy through the whole list family, rules of conduct and behavior for the volunteers to be equal and focused on positive energy, open communication and a democratic process.

So if you have an idea about how to improve this list, contact one of the volunteers. A link on the home page for CITY-o-Clay mentions "All outreach is funded by list members and run by volunteers." That link takes you to a page that shows who volunteers here, what that person takes care of and how to get in touch with them.

http://www.city-lists.com/CITYpromo/CITY-o-Clay-Moderators.htm

All the pages on my Com site has a link to COCModSquad and you can contact the owner of that list. All the COC Mod Team will get the forwarded message.

If you're interested in volunteering you can contact one of the volunteers here and when we need new Moderators you'll be in line for consideration. We have a dozen volunteers at present and are not in need of new volunteers right now.

Lastly, if you're interested in creating a new CITY-List reading the CITY-Leaders Index page first would be a good place to start. If you feel comfortable with what you read there then you can contact me and we can discuss your idea for a new CITY-List. Building a Mod Team is necessary because no CITY-List can be run by only one person. Everyone needs back up.

So that's what goes on behind the scenes to make sure that your experience on this list and any CITY-List you might be part of is consistent with regards of what to expect from the volunteers.

That's the process. I think I'll add this to my Ramble stash because it's something that comes up now and again.

xoxo

NJ

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