Gohelp

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All queries to GO are now directed to one email list: gohelp@geneontology.org. This is to help us monitor the types of queries we receive, and to ensure that all queries are responded to.

Process

To divide up the work of answering gohelp queries, we are going to use a gohelp rota where each person will be 'on duty' for 1 week at a time. It is responsibility of the person on duty to make sure that all queries are answered, either by answering it themselves, or by forwarding on to someone else to answer.

Mail sent to gohelp is moderated. This minimizes the amount of spam that is sent to the mailing list. The mail to be moderated is forwarded to a Gmail account. To view potential gohelp mail, log into Gmail with the username geneontology, (Eurie will email you the password).

Check Spam Folder

The bulk of the email will be spam. But occassionally real questions sent via the web contact form will be filtered into spam. These should be marked with a yellow star next to the email. In order to train the spam filter, mark these emails as "not spam".

Answering emails

  • Forward the emails to your own email account. Do not answer emails directly from the Gmail account.
  • To answer the email, delete all the header information
  • Change the subject line
  • Make sure to send the response to the email address of the person who submitted the question.
  • CC gohelp on your response so all responses will be archived

There are labels created for each of the people on the rota. You could use these to help yourself keep track of which ones have been answered or need answering. But at the end of your week, you should delete the emails that have been taken care of from the Gmail account. The ones that are still unanswered, you could leave with your "label" on the email but ideally, you should make sure that you've gotten back to the person submitting the request within 24 hours. Even if it's to say "we're looking into this" when you've forwarded it to the another person.

Help with Emails

We have put together a gohelp people list of the best people to send the different queries to.

There is also an archive of gohelp emails.