Talk:Basic Intake Documentation

I'm seeing a few things in working receiving for the first time after the redesign:

1) What should we have volunteers do about cables? There used to be a quasi-sophisticated system for them. Right now there's spots for cat5 cable, power cables for the store (what does that mean? only nice ones?), ribbon cable, and perhaps another cable type. I noticed that there's no howto for receiving cables, either. Perhaps we should just throw most cables in together and send 'em to offbeat receiving for now?

2) Also: it seems that two philosophies of recording gizmos as recycled has arisen in the past many months. The first way is the more traditional:

• receive a gizmo, then test it or decide whether it should be recycled, then write it down somewhere and have a data entry volunteer change its status to recycled.

• The second, newer way: test the gizmo first, then give it a number if it works. If it doesn't work, record it on the clipboard by the door - then a bunch of similar types of gizmos are simultaneously given numbers and 'recycled' statuses in the database with the cloner.

I'm not incredibly partial to either way, but some volunteers have told me that they've been confused by the fact that there's two ways to do things. Perhaps we should choose one way for simplicity's sake?

3) The Mac stuff. I know that rilly old stuff should be received as recycled, but I don't see a list of what stuff to recycle anywhere, and the new documentation just says to send stuff to the mac pile - no mention of age. It seems that we want receiving to be easily self-running.

Shawn 17:25, 12 Apr 2005 (PDT)

To do items

• Determine where everything that leaves Basic Intake should go and make signs that mark where those places are. The signs should look similar. There are two basic types, for example:
  1. INCOMING MONITORS
  2. MONITOR RECYCLING
• What things need to be received if they are just going to be recycled?
• Incoming location for Advanced Receiving
• Advanced Receiving stations to draw in core receiving volunteers
• Mac shelf triage process
• Printer/Scanner/Fax triage process and place
• Consistent, simple testing instructions for new testing area (With maps showing where keepers and recyclers go.)

RfS 18:04, 12 Apr 2005 (PDT)