NCF Help Desk Coordinator's Annual Report for 1997 
       ==================================================

As Help Desk Coordinator, it is my responsibility to ensure questions get
answered in an accurate and timely fashion, which includes staying
informed and communicating with the staff/key volunteers, keeping help
desk volunteers informed, and of course monitoring the newsgroup to ensure
accurate and timely responses to requests for help. In addition, I assist
other volunteers who provide pseudo-help-like services to the membership
(such as the spam desk.) The help desk has also ventured beyond its stated
mandate this year to develop software for easing connection to NCF.

In 1997, the help desk "staff" consisted largely of 3 or 4 key people
(long time help deskers), with frequent input from volunteers and staff
from other areas (when questions arose concerning services they administered.)

A sampling of questions, from November 26, 1997 to December 26, 1997,
shows  167 distinct topics, all but 24 of which were responded to. This is
a response rate of  86%. It is important to note that most of the
unresponded to postings were announcements, comments which did not solicit
an answer, or were dealt with in other threads. Our real response rate may
be closer to 95% +.

Key concerns or areas where members had problems tended to be:

* Problems with setting up PPP (by far the largest category.)
* Problems with spam and junk mail.
* Problems with access/modem problems, etc.
* Problems with accessing news
* Problems with mail lockouts, system crashes, or problems
* Problems with setting up a properly working home page.

While the nature of newsgroups means that we cannot give answers in real
time, response times in ncf.admin at current can invariably be measured in
hours. Members can reasonably look to having their question answered by
the time they login next.

When I took on the coordination role, I had a few key aims:

* Increase response time; ensure response to each unique query, where possible
* Improve accuracy of responses. Ensure that people answering questions
check to see if someone else has answered, and only add follow-ups if they
have more (and non-conflicting) information to add.
* Ensure polite and useful flow of discussion. Redirect policy flames and
irrelevant discussion to appropriate forums. These two distractions tend
to make finding questions and answers harder to find. 

I think we have largely accomplished this. Where discussion on NCF policy
is still a heated debate (as it should be) in other forums, these have
largely vacated ncf.admin. Answers to questions are most often courteous
now, whether it is team members providing the answers or other NCF
members. People answering questions for the most part have read other
answers and don't provide conflicting or contradictory information.
Because of the volume of questions I answer, I think I may be the most
guilty of this - but I take care to delete incorrect answers that come
from me.

Goals for the coming season should include:

* If possible, the translation of some of our resources to French
* A larger pool of core volunteers answering questions.
* Improved "go help" documentation. Some of the Case Western Reserve
material is getting quite dated.

The success of the Help Desk depends on the support and dedication of many
of our members. Whether it be members helping to answer questions, members
taking the time to phrase questions in an accurate easy-to-diagnose way,
or people stepping forward and offering their services officially, the
Help Desk is about members helping other members- the true spirit of NCF.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved
in providing online help to NCF members during 1997.
 
Richard K Bethell
cj434