Hello! :)

I'm a Newbie and I'd love to be adopted :) i wont pee on your carpet i promise :)

Can we clarify some ground rules?
 

I always feel for newbies here who ask for adoption, because there seems to be no clear strategy for this. Now I know it's largely up to the "mentor" but really, wtf are we supposed to do? I adopted at least three newbs, had a meaningful few PMs with one and the others just kind of wandered off when I wasn't looking. It's not good for them and it's not good for us when there are no guidelines to follow.

I see the thread was opened in 2007, and no doubt the OP is no longer around, so could we get some feedback as to what you think your duties should be as a mentor, or adopter? I get the feeling many newbs asking for or even achieving adoption here think they'll get a good deal and be shown around when the end result seems to be, well, nothing really.

Are there any rules, guidelines or responsibilities? If not, is anyone interested in creating some? I think the whole idea is great but its implementation is completely letting down the whole process. It's all right for us who probably think it's a bit of fun, but I don't doubt that there are people here who post in this thread genuinely expecting to be helped through their first few weeks or so of membership, and if they don't get that help and are more or less ignored after an initial "Yeah I'll take you", is it any wonder they're not staying around?

As I say, I'm as guilty as anyone of not taking care of my newbies, but I would like to try to put this right. Anyone agree, disagree, think I'm being my usual make-a-mountain-of-a-molehill self? Is this not an issue we need to tackle and think about, especially given the current "newbies arent staying around because we dont make them welcome" theme in the "We've got a problem" thread?

I have responded to noobs wanting adoption and then they never even responded back. Not sure if this threads still really going. Like you said I wish some guidelines were in place.

You can make up your own guidelines when you take someone under your wing. That's what I used to do. I mostly used to PM them and let them know to PM me if they have any questions. It's not all that difficult.

Yeah that's more or less what I did too, dj, but it just seems like "call me if you need anything", which isn't I think what the spirit of this idea was originally about. I really don't know: I would have thought maybe introducing the newb to the members, finding out what they like and sharing some music info with them, maybe encouraging them to participate in certain threads with you --- you might say get them into using the shoutbox; I don't use that at all --- I dunno, I just think there should be more we can do to help new members find their way around. After all, a lot of people won't want to admit to not knowing or understanding something, whether to take a comment at face value for instance where if you know who the person is you'd be better able to make that distinction, and I think many won't PM because they think they'd be bothering the mentor.

I just think clearer guidelines, no rules or anything but a basic idea of what you as a mentor are expected to do and what the newb can expect you to do would be helpful.

If you want to come up with guildlines then by all means but all of those things that you said could easily be done through PMs but I know you seem to like structure and it wouldn't be a bad thing I suppose. I don't have anything to add at the moment right now but if I think of something I'll let you know and we can just edit it in later after you put up the initial ones. Oh what was that? you didn't volunteer yourself to do it? I'm pretty sure I heard you volunteer to do it.

I've certainly no problem doing it, but I'm not sure if I'm the one who should. I mean, who am I to tell people how they should treat new members? I wouldn't presume. All I offered were suggestions, ideas. If anyone wants me to setup a list of let's say responsibilities I can, but I think either a mod or mods should approve that, or perhaps they should be the ones to set up the rules, if any are to be set up.

It's really not that big a deal to me; I'm thinking more of poor guys and gals who come on here looking to be adopted, are, and then nothing happens. Yeah I do like structure and I think this is one place where it's definitely needed. Saying "it's up to you" is all fine and good, but then you can decide to do nothing, or just do the minimum; basically, when you get bored being a mentor you can just forget about it, but what about the person you're mentoring? Maybe there should be certain qualifications? Again, I don't know: I'm just throwing ideas around here, despite the fact that dj thinks I'm setting myself up as the one to do this. I'm not. If enough people think I should then I may, but again is it my place to do that?

Remember: a newbie is not just for Christmas! ;)

who wanna adopt me


i will also adopt someone newer

This was a member run type of thing though. I don't feel like mods need to approve diddly squat as long as the guidelines don't cross the general rules of MB. Also another thing that I used to give my newbies was the newcomer guide that tore I believe wrote up. It comes in handy for that.

Go ahead Trollheart you know you want to set this up. I'm not sure why you are trying to convince yourself or that you feel you need a pat on the back from others to set it up. Go ahead and take the initiative and set it up.

:) :) :) :)