Crappy administrators

[Táltos]

Please keep in mind that email can get lost not only across servers, but also in spam filters and (most often) in an inbox deluged with email while the owner is taking care of pressing family responsibilities, which must come first.

My advice to anyone in sending email, particularly to volunteers, is: Re-send the email a week later, with the polite comment, "Perhaps you didn't see this the first time."

Actually lgmayka you are the best project administrator, and I really appreciate any input you have. Believe me I more than anyone can appreciate about pressing family matters. I have an elderly mother that is sick, (I also just spent a good part of my day at the ER with her). I also take care of my young child. I have a husband, and a full time job. A job that involves life and death situations. I can't even get an uninterrupted lunch break when I'm doing it. In this day and age of hand held devices, everyone is pretty much plugged in to what is going on regardless.

I also realize that project administrators are not paid. I get it that they volunteer. I do appreciate that. I have also tried to do my best to be part of this project ie encourage upgrade, donating. I can't make too many excuses for people at this point. The best part of this is if I had just had my question answered it would have meant they would have not ever needed to receive an email from me ever again anyway. If you have more questions as to what I'm really talking about you can pm me. I really don't need to get into all the details here about it.

Thanks for all you do Larry.

[dna]

100% Real Life™

Please keep in mind that email can get lost not only across servers, but also in spam filters and (most often) in an inbox deluged with email while the owner is taking care of pressing family responsibilities, which must come first.

My advice to anyone in sending email, particularly to volunteers, is: Re-send the email a week later, with the polite comment, "Perhaps you didn't see this the first time."

W.

[lgmayka]

I will not be sending either one of them any further questions by email ever again, as apparently I am not an important enough project member to give a response to.

Please keep in mind that email can get lost not only across servers, but also in spam filters and (most often) in an inbox deluged with email while the owner is taking care of pressing family responsibilities, which must come first.

My advice to anyone in sending email, particularly to volunteers, is: Re-send the email a week later, with the polite comment, "Perhaps you didn't see this the first time."

[dna]

wiki

I feel that some project administrators would like to have a Community Wiki they could keep up to date, as some answers are common to more than one project.

And also it could server as a place a newbie could use when trying to determine whether a particular (not a surname project, trese are? straightforward) project is for them.

Some decision tree, like if you are R1a consider these projects, if you are R1b consider these projects. If you are R-M269 do this... If you are R-M222...

W.

P.S.
The FTDNA Learning Center...

[Táltos]

Hello All,
Group admins should at least be replying to emails that are received. If you have any that you get no response we can try and contact them on our end and seek replacements if needed.
-Darren Marin
Family Tree DNA

Hi Darren,
Nice to hear from you on the forum. Thank you for letting us know this. I think the DNA Projects are one of the pluses going for FTDNA. There are some really good administrators out there, and some that are quite frankly really bad.

I agree that the administrators should at least respond to an email from their project member. Hopefully it would be something insightful, or even an honest I'm not really sure about that at the present time. I recently was totally ignored by two administrators of the same project for a question that I feel was very important. Thankfully another member of the same project was able to help me out with what was needed. I am not looking to file any sort of official complaint about these two, but it has shown me great insight about them. I will not be sending either one of them any further questions by email ever again, as apparently I am not an important enough project member to give a response to.

[larzus]

I don't like the thought of a rating system but some mechanism for feedback is a good idea. Not feedback of administrators but feedback of the project which is a different thing. Across my four kits I am a member of several projects with varying administration styles.

An enthusiastic project administrator is worth their weight in diamonds and I have a few of these. The enthusiasm gives us all energy to do our bit in the project and with the enthusiasm they gain experience at a rate of knots and can share that too.

I am a member of other projects where I don't even know who the administrator is and the supplied email - which gives no clue as to name or gender of the administrator - is never answered. Yes, it could be due to spam filters, how would you work that out?

The biggest issues for me are surname projects where either the administrator is only truly interested in a surname within a particular country (read United States usually Colonial) and in trying to identify the emigrating ancestor, or where the project has achieved its original aims and the excitement has died, leaving us later joining members without any sense of purpose.

It's easy to say 'start another project' but I have read the FtDNA Project Guidelines and they reference a strict policy not to have two projects on the same topic.

I have also found after sending a few emails that some project administrators are very defensive if you ask questions or make suggestions and can respond quite rudely to what was just a newbie question about the direction of a particular project and our expected role in it.

Is there a clear system in place for Project Administrators to call for assistants in their projects? If so, those of us who have time and energy might be very happy to help, but to make an unsolicited offer to assist might be construed as an underhanded criticism.

[Sarmat]

I tend to think that a rating system might be overkill. I've come across a couple of non-responsive admins, but I agree the best way to handle this is probably through contacting FTDNA about those cases individually.

I'd also like to say that for the most part, the project admins I've dealt with have been wonderful resources of knowledge and advice regarding DNA testing/genetic genealogy. They definitely have my gratitude for volunteering their time to further our knowledge of our shared history.

[dna]

To introduce more complications...

Any ranking would need to have size categories. As managing a project with a dozen of participants and managing one with more than a thousand are two very different worlds.

W.

[MikeP]

Clarification

I'm not sure I was completely clear up above. I would give my current administrator high marks because I'm perfectly happy with what's happened so far. I don't expect more at this point in the process.

At the same time, I know people who would be upset with the same service because they expect everything and everybody in life to provide them with more. That's why I object to a rating system ... I agree with Darren that events be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Remember also that e-mail is not a perfect system. At work, I've had e-mails to myself wind up in spam. I try to check once a week to see what I've missed and occasionally I'll find an important e-mail from somebody else in there amongst all the special offers and Nigerian princes who've taken a fancy to me.

[Darren]

Hello All,
Group admins should at least be replying to emails that are received. If you have any that you get no response we can try and contact them on our end and seek replacements if needed.
-Darren Marin
Family Tree DNA

[AngeliaR]

Deal with the issue

What's wrong with dealing with the few problems there are as they arise rather than creating more red tape for everyone? It's just not that simple.

Make too many hoops to jump through and people will simply leave... no matter how passionate or effective they are.

A rating system if not carefully considered and implemented (and sorry, but I don't have a lot of faith it would be) could introduce competition and animosity into the community that is not there now. It could even negatively impact cooperation between related projects.

So, if some admin is not responding, not helping, Not updating the data, violating some rule, hiding results behind paywalls, etc... wouldn't it be better to have a sound process for addressing those specific deficits?

If reporting such failures to FTDNA isn't getting any resolution, then maybe that's the step that needs to be fixed.

[MikeP]

Standards

What should be the standards and expectations for administrators? The administrator for my surname project sounded excited about my interest in testing and arranged for one test to be paid through the project general fund (I donated to the fund). I haven't heard anything since and haven't expected to. As yet there are no results to talk about anyways.

Would somebody else be upset at this non-communication? Would somebody else be expecting their administrator to be burning up the internet complaining about how long results take? A rating depends on the level of attention and service expected. With no standards, it's simply up to the individual what they think the administrator should be doing for them.

I will likely join other projects once I have enough information to go on. What should the role be for these others once that happens? Should it be different for a surname project than a haplogroup project or a geographic project? These are issues I find with just throwing out the concept "rating". There's no context.

And no ... I am not an administrator ...

[lgmayka]

warning or replacing those who are not (for whatever reason) if there are other willing volunteers?

Good luck with that.

[penguin]

What's wrong with volunteers getting rated? who said a rating system is just for paid people? are you afraid your ratings will not be so good? Yes, i administer a project. yes, everyone is trying hard- some people are good at it and some people are not. what's wrong with keeping those who are good at it and warning or replacing those who are not (for whatever reason) if there are other willing volunteers? Being a volunteer is not an excuse for poor performance, nor should "effort" be used as the standard of success. Volunteers will be compared to other volunteers- level playing field. Is keeping a volunteer who is not doing well like social promotion for adults?

[LynCra]

There appear to be several threads addressing this issue. Perhaps time for a moderator to step in and consolidate or close some.