anyone interested in participating/helping with some kind of a reachout thing or if you just have some ideas or suggestions to contribute please post here.
positive comments only please. if you don't like an idea please feel free to say so and why and suggest ways to improve or other ideas, but if your post is negative please pm it to me so we can stay on track here.
and can the old thread please be closed? thanks :o



ok so can someone who was involved in the adopt a newbie program tell us how it was done? if the person who organized it is still around would they like to do it again? (sorry i can't remember who all was involved, i didn't participate cause i wasn't around much at that time)

if we do the daily/weekly reach-out challenge should it be posted here or in the patch? any ideas on how this could work? like should we post the suggestions for challenges in this thread and then someone can pick one and post it in the challenge thread?
i figure we don't need all that many ideas at first, we'll cycle through them at random cause they're things that can be done often (ie randomly pm'ing someone you don't know to introduct yourself, ask how something you read about in one of their posts is going etc) and we'll think up new ones along the way.

I don't have any ideas this minute, but I think I would like to help. I get overwhelmed by the many new names it's hard for me to form personalities with them all. So I fear I probably don't do much to make people feel welcome. Many people I don't feel I really have a feel for.

i have no ideas to offer right now, but i'm in :)

I'm comparatively new myself but I'm here pretty regularly...I can help if you need more warm bodies.

i'm a rather hateful individual. it's best that i don't adopt anyone anyhow. it's more like they'll get broken in, you know?

lol

I'll help out fo shizzle. ok, i don't know where that came from.... *backs away slowely*

* gives Prairiegirl the :stinkeye: and also backs away slowly. :p

I might be interested in helping out. Depends though, do we get to choose who we adopt? Or does that go against the whole idea?

i'm not sure, i still have to figure out how that works. someone will have to monitor new member registrations and i guess assign them out to volunteers, but if there was someone you felt you wanted to sign on for like if you have stuff in common etc you could just tell the person doing the assigning. if you have specific preferences on who you get you can just let the organizer know (ie if you prefer to adopt people that are vegan or vegetarian or whatever) is there anyone that wants to be the organizer for it actually? i don't mind doing it since it was my idea to bring it back but if someone really wants to do it or help with it that's cool too.

but the challenge thing anyone can do. i figure we'll post a new daily challenge every day, something like "pm a random person", "post in a forum you don't normally visit", "reply to a thread with no/few replies" that sort of thing, and when you've completed the challenge you can post to say so. you don't like win anything for doing the most challenges or anything and i don't think we'll keep score in any way, it's just for fun and to be friendly etc. and posting that you completed a challenge is just so we can keep motivated about it and encourage each other. if people want to keep score or compete against each other for the most completed that's cool. whatever makes it fun and interesting so we can keep it going for a while.

I'm interested in this. I participated in the PM challenge a while back, but that seemed to just peter out.

i am interested in doing this :)

I'm in! I'll gladly adopt any Christian or Spanish-speaking newbies. If we have a shortage of those, I'll take anyone else.

hah. so i did a search and it turns out the adopt a newbie program was actually first started by Michael (or rather the idea was posted by him) and from the looks of the thread nobody took charge of assigning people, which may be why it fizzled out. i think if we can organize it to make sure everyone who needs to be adopted and anyone who wants to adopt are all paired with someone, it might work pretty much the way he posted it.
http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=877&highlight=adopt+newbie

i don't see any other threads officially about this, but it's mentioned in a few others.

i think this is how it might work: i'll post a thread in the intro forum, and maybe a mod can sticky it. i'll explain the program and ask that newbies that are interested in being adopted post a couple of things about themselves (ie age, dietary preference, location, employment and something interesting about themselves) and oldbies can keep watch of the thread and pm or post to the newbies that they'd like to be paired with. i'll just ask that anyone that adopts someone tell me in the thread or by pm so i know they've got someone, cause if they're not paired within say a week, i'll start pm'ing volunteers to see if anyone's interested (just in case people forget to check the thread, this way nobody is left out. and i'll try first by location)

does that sound good?
and maybe we can post a list of volunteers so that if someone is too shy to post about themselves or about needing a "parent" they can just go ahead and pm a volunteer.

if anyone has anything to add to this please do, i'll wait til tomorrow to post the thread in case anyone has suggestions or problems about how to do it.


as for challenges should i just go ahead and start posting them and see how it goes? should we do it here or in the patch?

I'm interested in this. I participated in the PM challenge a while back, but that seemed to just peter out.

Ditto.

As for the challenges..posting them in the Patch sounds like a cool idea. For the "adoption" part, maybe pairing some folks together, instead of leaving them to match themselves. I fear that there may be newbies who are interested, but who wouldn't take the initiative (yet) to PM someone. But if you said...."your buddy is..." (lol), then they'd have somewhere to start.

Good idea LF! :up:

hm. it's just occurred to me that i don't know US geography, like, at all, so pairing by location should be interesting. i'll have to find a map :lol:
ok so if we'd rather just get paired automatically i guess i need locations of volunteers. if everyone could post or pm me their location i can make a list to post in the thread. i won't post locations in the thread though, that'd be silly :p
oh and volunteers: make sure to make some space in your pm inbox :notvegan:

Maybe we could do a sort of a mini-interview or something. Have them answer 20 or so questions (Age, sex, general location, reason for being interested in veg*nism, a couple silly questions). My only concern is many newbies don’t come back after a few days. People would tend to ignore the posts if they never see from the person again.

BTW I’m interested in participating in a reach out.

by the way the reachout challenge thread is posted in the patch as of yesterday :)

i finally got around to posting the adopt-a-newbie thread. i'm thinking i might post the names of all the oldbies participating so that if i'm not around to pair people up or a newbie wants to just ask a question or two in pm they can choose someone from the list. any objections to that?