What Price Success? Improving Posting Quality on HPfGU

[s_ings at s_ings.yahoo.invalid]

> kjirstem:

> On the topic of the work required of list elves, I wonder if there 
is
> any way to subdivide responsibilities into smaller chunks and 
involve
> more people?  I'm sure that the pool of available volunteers
> would be larger if the time commitment were smaller.   Like 
SSSusan, 
> I couldn't commit to 10-15 hours a week, I have a job, kids, and
> other volunteer obligations, but 2-3 hours a week might be 
possible.  
> I'm always amazed at the volunteer organizations that effectively
> deploy large numbers of volunteers.  I don't know how they do it
> but surely someone does.
> 

Sheryll:

I wanted to address this issue of time commitment, as it's now come 
up twice. Not all the elves put in that much time to the running of 
the group. Obviously, we all have real lives and our time available 
to dedicate to an online group varies from person to person and from 
time to time. 

To give you an example, I do both list reading and welcoming new 
members. I also am the person who schedules the daily tasks for the 
elves. I keep a database or two in good working order. I physically 
demod the members who are ready and send out their letters to let 
them know they've reached this stage. I try to contribute 
meaningfully to the major administration discussions buy often find 
my point has been made first by someone else. :)

I used to be the Birthday Elf, but gave it up when my time got 
stretched too thin. I do work, but mostly part-time these days. Of 
course, I still did all that while working 6 days a week at my last 
job, as well as working to organise Convention Alley last year. I 
have a husband who tolerates my time online with raised eyebrows and 
a daughter off at college who likes HP, will discuss theories and 
search for flints in the books, but won't join a discussion group 
because, as she says, "I'm not *that* obsessed."

How much time do I put into HPfGU? Not counting trying to skim all 
the posts daily? I honestly couldn't say. More than some, less than 
others. We all contribute what we can, when we can. I have, on 
average, one or two welcoming and reading days a month. Welcoming, 
because I've been doing it for years, I can do in 30 minutes or less, 
spending about a minute per email sent (not counting replying to 
responses). List reading can take anywhere from an hour to 2 hours 
each time, depending on the days volume and how much time I spend 
clearing my inbox at the same time. I multi-task all the time. When 
I'm cleaning up a database, I'm also reading email, for example. 

Kind of a long way to say that we contribute what time we have 
available. It doesn't have to be a commitment of many hours, just a 
commitment to do a few assigned tasks on a couple days a month. If 
people want to do more, we welcome it. If they need time off, we 
encourage it. 

Sheryll, speaking completely for herself and not the whole Admin team 
and sure that others will speak up on other issues :)