Kat Walsh wrote:
On 1/26/06, sannse sannse@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
sannse wrote:
I think that something needs to be done to bring the two versions together. It seems clear that people are writing to helpdesk-l, thinking that they are writing to the "site owner's" email address, and asking questions that would be better answered officially. And there are plenty of mails on OTRS that could be better answered by a general help desk.
The only way I can see of bringing them together is on OTRS. Perhaps with two queues, one official mail and one helpdesk.
I don't know, but I do think it's something we should look at.
Unfortunately there will always be people who use the wrong one.
Yes, but with OTRS it is easy to switch email from one queue to another. If there were clear guidelines as to what goes in which queue, then it wouldn't be a problem that some mail initially got in the wrong queue.
Or we could have one big queue - with both addresses leading there (and /many/ more helpers on it!)
I like the idea of using the ticket system for both addresses: grant access liberally to the helpdesk queue (anyone interested and reasonably clued) while having a smaller crew of people to answer the mail that really must be handled carefully and discreetly (confidential concerns, potential media blowups, etc.), to be easily moved back and forth. I don't think helpdesk-l works as is, as it's difficult to keep track of messages, and the boilerplate responses are a *big* help answering mail in OTRS. (You can see these at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en - it's amazing how much of the mail we get is people applying to our university or wishing to email celebrities.)
The possible benefits of having the helpdesk as a list -- many experienced eyes all looking at one question, openness, easy signup, etc. -- are negated by the sheer volume of the list, dearth of regular volunteers, and the fact that many people are confused about the difference between sending to the private info address and to a public mailing list -- I don't think anyone anticipated the sheer volume of it when it was created.
I am totally with mindspillage here. Two queues and movement of emails between the two.
For those who do not know the system yet, our OTRS contains now possibly 15-20 (?) queues and emails just circulate from one queue to the other, as needed. Some queues are just to answer information requests, others are more specialised (board, legal, donations etc....).
If I had one thing to ask for OTRS improvement, it would be for it to be able to better clean up spam though...
ant