Dealing with the public

This is KGNU's official policy on dealing with listener complaints and comments.

Please remember that when you are at the station or presiding at a KGNU outreach table or working a KGNU event, you are representing KGNU.

Every time you answer the phone at KGNU or respond to a visitor, you are creating an impression of the station for that person.

If it,s the first time the person calls or visits, your communication is even more crucial.

It is important to be polite even if the caller/visitor is abusive.

You can refer the caller:

To the Comment Line
To the Station Manager
A note can also be left the Station Manager mailbox at the station
To another staff member who is present when the complaint is made

In most cases, it is best not to defend, explain or comment.

If someone is abusive to you on the phone, refer them as listed above and hang up.

If someone is abusive in person, refer them as listed above and walk away.

DO NOT respond with anger or profanity; please be civil at all times.

Marty Durlin, 6/27/03

Computer etiquette

KGNU's computers are used my many people.

We all need to learn to be courteous to other users, by leaving computers in a good state.

This is in consideration for the high number of users, and of the fact that many of us are not completely comfortable with computers.

Don't customize
Don't abuse
Don't leave a mess behind.

Just like you wouldn't think of leaving a mess in the KGNU bathroom for others to take care of, you shouldn't leave a mess in a KGNU computer.

Don't customize

Don't customize a computer in any way.

You may feel that changing the "Network Neighborhood"'s icon to a Darth Vader image may be cute, but you're ignoring the fact that many of us will spend a long time looking for the right icon. Your little fun will cause frustration to new users, and require time for a tech volunteer to figure out how to undo your cutesyness.

Don't change:

desktop's icons, fonts, background image, skin...
task bar location, size or action
browser's toolbars (FireFox) - particularly, don't hide the browser's URL field
screen savers
sounds
Do not change a browser's start-up page. Only KGNU.org or KGNU.net are allowed as the start-up page for a browser, if any.

Leave the Red-Left computer with these and only these:

a FireFox page with a new playlist entry
Thunderbird for DJ e-mail

Do not add your personal favorites to the links toolbar of a browser (FireFox). Instead add bookmarks to your own folder.

Decreasing the window size to just the top bar by dragging the bottom right corner is very confusing to new users.

Don't abuse

* Do not use the DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) in the production studios for anything but 2 official KGNU businesses: audio editing or downloading/uploading programs for broadcast. For other uses, KGNU provides you with general purpose computers elsewhere.

Do not download new software unless it's really necessary for KGNU's operation.
- no games
- no IM (Instant Messaging)
- no screen savers
- no utilities
- no MP3s

Last month the Volunteer North computer was totally paralyzed by too full a hard drive, and it chose to delete files: the engineering folder!

Don't leave a mess behind

When done with a document or page, close it. Every weekday there are open, unsaved Word documents with news stories in the Volunteer office. Please don't expect others to close them for you. (Conversely, if you see some-one else's open document or browser window, don't close it. Instead, use the "minimize" function to reduce a window to just a button in the task bar. They may be still working on it, and had to leave to handle an emergency.)
If you are going to close someone else's playlist, please save it first, or all of their work entering it will be lost
When saving bookmarks to your favorite web-sites, create a folder with your name and place your bookmarks there. Please don't clutter the Bookmarks list, which should only have bookmarks that are of interest to the general user. There's no need to bookmark Google: it's already there, in the searcj box, on the top-right corner of FireFox.
Don't leave documents on the desktop. Create your own folder in the MyDocuments folder, and put them there.

Davide Andrea and Jon Lybrook, 4/1/03 Updated 3/18/06 by Davide Andrea