Has the USCF changed its policy in how one contacts its office? The new policy,
according to what appears on the Web site, is that now one has to fill out a
form. No longer listed are the various e-mail addresses of the departments and
personnel. This change in policy looks like it will create more work for the
New Windsor office, since the messages that are sent, after forms have been
filled out, will have to be sorted (correctly) by someone at HQ and distributed
to the appropriate personnel.

George Mirijanian

In article , Miriling says...

Has the USCF changed its policy in how one contacts its office? The new policy,
according to what appears on the Web site, is that now one has to fill out a
form. No longer listed are the various e-mail addresses of the departments and
personnel. This change in policy looks like it will create more work for the
New Windsor office, since the messages that are sent, after forms have been
filled out, will have to be sorted (correctly) by someone at HQ and distributed
to the appropriate personnel.

George Mirijanian

Perhaps the form routes to the correct email address based on the subject line
selected.

Kevin L. Bachler

George Mirijanian asks:

.."Has the USCF changed its policy in how one contacts its office? The new
policy, according to what appears on the Web site, is that now one has to fill
out a
form. No longer listed are the various e-mail addresses of the departments
and personnel. This change in policy looks like it will create more work for
the
New Windsor office, since the messages that are sent, after forms have been
filled out, will have to be sorted (correctly) by someone at HQ and
distributed to the appropriate personnel."

George, I know of no policy change. On the contrary ,with a reduced staff, it
makes sense to reduce not increase bureaucratic control.

The absence of email addresses sounds like an oversight.

The ability to order standard forms without having to go through staff sounds
like a time saver for everyone to me.

I will forward a copy of this posting to our office manager Bill Goichberg.

Happy New Year to all let's together make 2004 a great successful year for
USCF.

Don Schultz

Subject: Change in policy in contacting USCF office?

On 30 December 2003 Kevin L. Bachler replied
in
Message-id:

Perhaps the form routes to the correct email address based on the subject
line
selected.

Kevin L. Bachler


Perhaps you're right. I would hope that the subject line would automatically
route the message to the appropriate department. Only the office knows for
sure.

George Mirijanian

(Miriling) writes:

Has the USCF changed its policy in how one contacts its office? The new policy,
according to what appears on the Web site, is that now one has to fill out a
form. No longer listed are the various e-mail addresses of the departments and
personnel. This change in policy looks like it will create more work for the
New Windsor office, since the messages that are sent, after forms have been
filled out, will have to be sorted (correctly) by someone at HQ and distributed
to the appropriate personnel.

George, this is one of several anti-spam measures which were recommended
by several IT security experts.

In the last few days thousands of spam messages have been sent to various
uschess.org adresses or forged to appear to come from uschess.org
addresses. Some of them bore viruses.

It appears that most of those addresses were harvested from the website,
quite possibly by one of the recent viruses that harvests addresses from
someone's web cache. (How do I know this? Some of those addresses
appear ONLY on the website, have only existed for a few weeks, and are
receive-only aliases which have never originated any mail.)

Putting up a contact form instead of an e-mail address is a way of cutting
down on future 'bots'. And if it can help route mail to the right address
for the specific request instead of having most of them go to Barb Vandemark,
who has been getting the 'feedback' mail, it can improve response rates.

As far as I know, the underlying e-mail accounts will largely remain
the same (though I have recommended we standardize them all), so if you
know someone's e-mail address you don't have to use the form if you
don't want to.
--
Mike Nolan

(Miriling) writes:
Has the USCF changed its policy in how one contacts its office? The
new policy, according to what appears on the Web site, is that now
one has to fill out a form. No longer listed are the various e-mail
addresses of the departments and personnel.

Due to out-of-control spamming, I also use a web form and no longer
publish my own email address. I don't know if that's the USCF's
motivation but it's practical policy if it is.

This change in policy looks like it will create more work for the
New Windsor office, since the messages that are sent, after forms
have been filled out, will have to be sorted (correctly) by someone
at HQ and distributed to the appropriate personnel.

So someone looks at each incoming message for 5 seconds or so,
deciding where to route it. How many messages a day do you think
there are? I bet they spent more time than that deleting spam. Of
course, putting a selection box into the web form itself could take
care of the problem as well.

"Chessdon" wrote in message
...

I will forward a copy of this posting to our office manager Bill
Goichberg.

I'm no longer concerned about our new office manager. While at the No.
American Open, Brenda told me that she was calling the shots for Bill.

StanB