Hi, Cindy. Are you aware that some of the hold for designations are done in order to provide very clean scans to new volunteers who are being mentored by someone and need to learn how to validate? In other cases, a submitter may want to know that the validater of a certain book is familiar with Microsoft Word and can handle advanced issues with formatting and proofreading. Some of our new volunteers do not even know how to unzip files and find page breaks and would be blown away by needing to standardize multiple tables.
You asked how a new volunteer can establish trust and a good track record if no one gives them a chance. My question to you is, who isn't giving new people a chance? I don't see this kind of treatment taking place. Many of us have spent literally hours of our time showing new volunteers how to work with text and how to use their technology. New volunteers establish trust by building relationships with other volunteers through the lists and/or chat room and developing a history by working on books from the step 1 page. Since 98 percent of the books on step 1 are not held for anyone, there are bountiful opportunities for a new validater to learn to validate. In fact, there are quite a lot of people who post here about books they've submitted that would be good choices for new validaters. When those books are posted, the submitter usually gives out an email address and offers to work with the new validater. This is how relationships are built and how the trust between a submitter and validater begins. This is how people build networks of contacts and how they get things done both mor quickly and reliably than one person can do alone. People naturally use colaboration with others at home, at work, and in school. It seems reasonable to bring that concept to volunteering as well.
Limiting people and their ability to network and colaborate on projects as they see fit assumes that a group of rational adults cannot make decisions about how they choose to get things done and how that work is processed. It seems that discrimination is the default assumption here on a practice that takes 2 percent of the books away from volunteers at large. We have some urgent and far more serious issues that need attention. This seems like worrying about a hang nail when you've got your leg gashed open and needing stitches. Let's clear out the gigantic backlog of books on step 1 and then discuss what to do about the people putting holds on things when it's cleared.
Monica Willyard groups Warford wrote:
Hi Monica,I do understand your points as far as percentages go. However, I do respectfully disagree.
