User:Nick Moyes/Adoption


 * Show all my user sub-pages

Explanation of this page: In early 2018 I decided I wanted to join the WP:AAU programme as a potential Adopter, and soon came to realise that it was no longer delivering meaningful support for editors as we have 'quick fix fora' like WP:HD and WP:TH. The solution I felt - and still feel - is to target it away from completely new users, and focus it solely towards those rookie editors who have already demonstrated a broad commitment to Wikipedia, but who want to learn more. I also felt the 'adopt me' template should be deprecated/scrapped, as it creates expectations that simply aren't met. Potential adoptees should be the ones seeking out a suitable adopter, and not vice versa. The Help Desk and Teahouse should play a role in steering such clearly committed novice editors towards adoption, but should not encourage total beginners without any prior editing experience there.

In Jan/Feb 2018 I began the process of discussing with past AAU contributors my rationale for wanting to change the programme. Despite being offered a carte blanche to reformat AAU, I was unable to progress beyond the rough notes below as real world commitments intervened. I currently have insufficient time in big enough blocks o focus on a well thought out, but total revamp of AAU. It is however something I would still like to pick up when my personal situation changes. Nick Moyes January 2020

Adoption
Some examples of where Adoption is and is not always the best solution:
 * 8 January 2020 Adoption request Blocked as sock puppet same day.
 * 7 January 2020 Gave my views - then contributed on their talk page.
 * Advised fellow host that Adoption is not the best route for a brand new user. 4 January 2020


 * Advised against ( I was probably wrong in that instance. They received an offer from CaptainEek right after) 4 January
 * Supportive answer given

Outline notes

 * Useractivity suggested by Moxy - can't seem to run it.

This is just a draft of random thoughts at this early stage.

I'm willing to offer informal help and guidnce to a new editor who can genuinely show they want to learn how to make this amazing encyclopaedia even better. I want to work with editors who are genuinely interested in improving this encylopaedia, so I'm more likely to support you if you care about improving scientific, geographic or historical content. I'm unlikely to offer much support if you want to write about one minor celebrity or promote a company.

I will want to know the kind of articles you'd like to edit, and if there is one particular page you actually want to crwate an article about, or improve in some way. I don't mind if you've had complaints about your first few edits. Many editors get it wrong to start with - that's what our help desks and adopters want to assist you with I'll want to see you've already taken the inaitaive and completed the WP:TWA|Te Wikipedai Adventure]].

Things a potential adoptee is expect to do:
 * Have identified a genuine reason for seeking one-to-one support from their Adopter (i.e. they want to edit across the encyclopaedia and want to develop overall skills and understanding. I'm not preared to help somone promote their cmopany or themselves. We're here to buid an encyclopaedia)
 * Be aware how to ask questions at the Teahouse for assistance at any time of day or night from helpful hosts
 * Five pillars
 * COI
 * VER
 * N
 * RS
 * VER
 * N
 * RS

First edits TWA Basics - whic preferred editor? Lets stick with markup, and just use Visual Editor for aut referencing

Draft post
For some reason we point have chosen to demoralise all newcomers by pointing them to a list of all 269 editors who we tell them are willing to adopt a user. (i.e. those who have put a   template somewhere on one or more of their userpages. It displays at: Category:Wikipedians seeking to adopt in Adopt-a-user

What an impression we must be giving these poor souls! An utter waste of their time - it must be so demoralising for anyone trying to wade through it. As suggested above, I proposed that this template is either deleted, or a bot is established to strip it from any userpage who has not been actively editing in the last 6 months or so. On what do I base this suggestion? Well, the evidence that in a sample of 50 of those editors, only two has shown sufficienty activity as to be likely to have the skills or time to support an adoptee. The rest are either out of date, or its just 'badge collecting' I've analysed the first 50 names in that list:

Copy of Main WP:AAU Page (for rewording)
See that page's history for edit attribution

This section creates header with:

The Adopt-a-user program is being remodelled so it can assist less experienced Wikipedia editors by pairing them with more experienced ones with shared interests. These editors (referred to as adopters or mentors) make themselves available to "adopt" newer users, guiding them along the way as they learn about Wikipedia and its various aspects. The adopter is willing to serve as a single-point of contact, answering questions on performing particular tasks. We expect those seeking adoption to be pro-active in approaching a potential adopter.

The project aims to inform new users about the ins and outs of Wikipedia and steer them away from making less-than-constructive edits or misplaced test edits.

Well over a thousand users have been involved in the program at one time or another. (though in recent years its role has lessened as other ways to find answers to questions now exist. IN 2018(?) the scheme ws adapted to focus on editors with a commitment to remain and improve as editors..... )

SECTION TO BE ADDRESSED: So, if you're new or inexperienced and would like to:


 * Ask questions about editing, contributing to Wikipedia and creating your first article
 * Learn to navigate processes and policies and guidelines
 * Get help with article creation or image uploads or any other activities on Wikipedia

'''. . .then an adopter should be able to help you. Adoption lasts as long as the adopter and adoptee want to continue, so you can stop any time if you feel you've learned enough, or you'd like to take a break.'''

Adoption is (now) only suitable or users who intend to be long-term contributors and would like support to become active members of the editing community. This program is not for you if you're simply looking to contribute a single article to Wikipedia, (maybe link to WP:YFA better here?) but have no intention of remaining as an active editor in the years ahead (well after adoption). If you are simply here to create one article, see this page for help and do not request adoption.

Any newcomer who just needs help with one-off problems should ask at the Teahouse question forum. Or, for slightly more complex problems, try either the Help desk, Editor assistance, or place a Help me request on your own Talk page. These are all much better ways to get quick answers. What adoption (now) provides is a single point of contact with an editor willing to help you at different stages and guide your editing, as well as assisting your understanding of our main policies and editing guidelines.


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Participation
Being adopted is easy. It is up to you to take the initiative and find a suitable adopter. Just look through our list of adopters to find an experienecd editor with common interests. (This might subject-related, or it could be activity-related, such as anti-vandalism). Click the link to their Talk page and leave them a message, explaining your editing interests and motivation for being adopted. If you choose an adopter who shares your interests, they will be more able to assist you while you learn under their tutelage.

View the list of adopters!

Alternatively, you can simply edit your user page, add the following text,  adoptme  and then Publish the page. This will put you on a list of potential adoptees and display the following userbox on your page:

However, as with many areas of Wikipedia, a pro-active approach is far more likely to get you adopted. Just leaving the adoption request on your userpage could result in a long delay before your request is noticed or answered. For more information, visit the Adoptee's Area and the Adopt-a-user talk page. (If you are interested in becoming an Adopter yourself, please visit the Adopter's Area.)


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Is adoption right for you?
Adoption needs a commitment from you! You are expected to stick around, practice and learn to work with others, and demonstrate a willingness to contribute across a broad range of Wikipedia activities. Adoption isn't for getting short-term assistance with a particular problem; there are other help forums for that.

Whilst some adopters take a structured, step-by-step approach to guiding new editors through the various elements of working on Wikipedia; others are more informal. They may prefer to simply steer you through key areas you're having difficulty with, and answer questions when you encounter problems.

NEED TO REFINE If you're new or inexperienced and would like a single point of contact to: ...then finding an Adopter could be just the thing for you!
 * Guide you through understanding our key policies and 'how to' guidelines
 * Discuss a range of questions about editing, contributing to Wikipedia and possibly create your first article
 * Receive guidance on interacting with other editors, article creation, image uploads and a host of other activities on Wikipedia, like help out by preventing-vandalism or doing routine maintenance tasks

Copy of Adoptee's Area for rewording

 * (Copied from WP:Adopt-a-user/Adoptee's Area) See that page's history for edit attribution
 * (See also: WP:Adopt-a-user/Adoptee's Area/Resources)
 * This section creates header with:

Getting adopted
The adoption program is open to all users who would like help in using Wikipedia. Joining is easy; simply follow one of these two methods:

Find your own adopter (recommended method): look at our list of adopters who are actively available to take on new adoptees; this list has information about their interests, abilities and any restrictions they may have, so if you find one you like, contact them on their talk page and ask to be adopted.

Let an adopter find you: just edit your user page and add  adoptme . Save this edit by hitting the Publish changes button, and sooner or later an experienced user may come by and offer to adopt you. It would help if you can also add some information about yourself to your user page so potential adopters will know your interests, and why you want to be adopted. Doing it this way is likely to take a lot longer than simply approaching an adopter directly, but nothing prevents you from doing both.

If you've been adopted and you don't think that your adopter is a good fit for you, just let them know and then follow this process again to get a new adopter. Adopters recognise that sometimes they aren't the right person to help, and won't be offended if you tell them you're looking for another adopter.

If you are having problems with your adopter that you feel you can't discuss with them, please leave a message on the main adopt-a-user talk page and other editors will do what they can to help you. If you have an urgent query, please place helpme on your user talk page followed by your query.

Please remember to remove the "Adopt me" template from your user page once you no longer want to seek support.


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What it's all about
Adoption is...
 * ...A single point of contact (mentorship), where the adopter gives guidance, answers questions and offers friendly advice and support.
 * ...For help with technical difficulties, policy interpretation and conflict management.

Adoption is not...
 * ...Forever. Once experienced, an adoptee will be able to "graduate", though some stay in touch with their adopters for years afterwards.
 * ...A social club. Though fun, adoption is only here to help users improve and use Wikipedia.
 * ...Just for the newest of users. It's also for those who have been editing a while, but have limited experience, and now want to expand their involvement.
 * ...A shield. Adoptees remain solely responsible for their behaviour.


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Resources and Help
For a list of useful resources to help you get started on Wikipedia, see the adoptee resources page - feel free to add anything, in or out of Wikipedia, that you think other new users will find helpful.

Teahouse
For a fast answer when your adopter is not available, why not ask at the Teahouse, a friendly environment where questions are answered quickly.

Copy of Adopter's Area for rewording
(Copied from WP:Adopt-a-user/Adopter's Area) See that page's history for edit attribution

(See also: WP:Adopt-a-user/Adopter's Area/Resources)

Becoming an Adopter
To sign up to be an Adopter, check that you meet the criteria to the right, add your details to the list of users available for Adopting, and only then add the template  to your user page.

Finding an adoptee is a pro-active process, so remember to regularly check the category of new users seeking Adoption as most new users respond best to direct requests for adoption. If you find a user you want to adopt, leave a message on their talk page and change ' to ' on their user page. Once adoption is complete use the ' and ' templates on the appropriate user pages. Changing these templates is an important step, since the user will remain listed as 'seeking adoption' for as long as the Adoptme template remains on their page. If you wish to show participation in the program without indicating status or adoption partner, use the  template on your user page. Please remove the template once you can no longer assist, or if you cease editing.

Remember that potential adoptees are not obliged to accept your offer of adoption. By the same token, just because another potential adopter has offered adoption this does not mean that you cannot also offer a choice, so you may also wish to check the category of new users who have been offered Adoption.

Mentorship
If you are an administrator or very experienced user in good standing, you may be interested in becoming a supervisory mentor. Supervisory mentors are assigned to users who are under some form or community sanctions, usually as part of the dispute resolution process or as a condition of an unblock. To offer your services as a mentor, please add the code  to your Adopter Profile.

Resources
For a list of useful resources and templates to help you with your adoption, see Adopter Resources page - feel free to add anything, in or out of Wikipedia, that you feel may help others.


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Criteria
The following guidelines have been drawn up:


 * Adopters should be available often to help their adoptees.
 * Adopters should have a good understanding of the encyclopedia and its policies and guidelines.
 * Adopters should have sufficient experience before they start adopting.
 * Adopters should be willing to ask questions of other adopters, should their breadth/depth of understanding mean they do not know the answer.
 * Adopters should only take on as many Adoptees as they can practically cope with.


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Bot thoughts

 * Because I have no experience of working with bots or their operators, I wonder if you could you help me understand how the line "|bot-updated= " was functioning in our list of adopters at WP:Adopt-a-user/Adoptee's Area/Adopters which you ran for us on 2nd Feb? Some entries are labelled "|bot-updated=yes"; others "|bot-updated=no"; with a third set left blank as "|bot-updated= " and fourth set of entries without this line present at all.

What I would really like to achieve is just to have your bot detecting if a user (who has declared themselves to be "available") has been inactive for a period of a few weeks and automatically switching their availablity from "yes" to "no", and then back to "yes" again as soon as they resume any level of editing. But then, I'd love to be able to prevent the bot from updating their entry at all should a certain criterion be set. This criterion would be when person on the "available to adopt " list decides for the next few months that, whilst they'd like to stay on the adopting list, they'd like to manually set their entry to "unavailable" and prevent the bot from changing it back from "no" to "yes" even though they are actively editing. This situation might arise when someone has taken on an adoptee for a few months, so doesn;t want to delete their entry, but doewsn't wantr to be flagged as "available" either. Can the bot-updated= line be used to get the bot to ignore that particular entry, and keep the flag set as "unavailable"?

I've looked at how changes have been made by twqo passes of your bot, and can't understand wy some entires that previously had no BOT UPDATED LINE IS

've been making a number of edits, or that they've already adopted another user and can't take on any more right now, despite continuing to edit

But overriding that (in one direction only) I can envisage a situation where a person on that list decides for the next few months that, whilst they'd like to stay on the adopting list, for the time being they'd like to prevent the bot from changing their availability from "no" to "yes" even though they've been making a number of edits, or that they've already adopted another user and can't take on any more right now, despite continuing to edit. So, again, we'd want them to be able to prevent the bot flagging them as "currently accepting adoptees". My hope is that your bot will run and do the routine available/unavailable flagging of adopters, but that each user can additionally prevent the bot from flagging as active if they so choose.

Is there a way me to use for a user who wants to remain on our list of potential adopters to manually set their status to "unavailable" and for the bot not to override it back to being available again, even though they are still actively editing? For example, I can envisage a situation where a person on our list of potential adopters decides for the next few months that they cannot take on anyone right now, perhaps because they've already adopted another user. But they will want to be available again in the near future.

for the time being they'd like to prevent the bot from changing their availability from "no" to "yes" just because they've been making a number of edits, despite continuing to edit

Background
Established in 2006, AAU has been in the doldrums for some considerable time, probably because of the recent availability and success of other, more instant, means for users to gain assistance (WP:TH; WP:HD; ; IRC help channel), plus numerous detailed guidance pages and even The Wikipedia Adventure.

The programme encourages both newcomers and potential adopters to place an appropriate template on their user pages. Thus, each type of user can view all of the others by displaying the relevant Category. In addition, adopters may create an informative entry on the 'Adopters Page'. Newcomers to Wikipedia gain awareness of AAU by various means: Links from the Help Pages, a small number of Welcome templates, and...WHAT ELSE?

Without frequent or automated maintenance, templates have built up on the pages of inactive users in large numbers. As at Jan 2018 there were xxxx users offering adoption, of which yyy% had not edited in over zzz months. Of xxx editors seeking adoption, only 20? were actively editing. The preponderance of inactive editors renders the task of finding a currently active adopter or adoptee almost impossible and quite demoralising. In addition, the adopters area list was not being kept up to date. Of xx editors listed, only yyy had edited in the last zzz months. (Bot updating now reactivated)

What can be done?
A) Business as usual - no change to project. AAU remains little used, hard to navigate, and effectively redundant. At the mercy of passing editors who might revive it for a while, before moving on.

B) Revive existing project, cleaning out redundant templates from inactive use. Ensure main processs are automated. Would this actually revive the project? Is mentorship/support provided in this way still useful? Would it meet a genuine need?

C) Modify the way the project works so as to deliver some form of support that is not provided elsewhere.

Proposal
Gggggg

Notes to another editor 2020
Following up on your post at the Teahouse about the Adopt - a -User programme, that new user gap, as I understand it, was once filled solely by WP:AAU. But nowadays, with the evolution of other help fora, new users are, for the most part, far better served by WP:HD and WP:TH. I have been gently working towards the Adoption scheme moving away from being seen as 'new user' support (which we do well at the Teahouse) and towards intermediate user support (or 'committed new user' might be a better term).

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Adopt-a-user#What_happened? this discussion] for an outline of my very slow-burn aspiration, in which we re-purpose AAU, and take it off the new user welcome templates, get rid of the 'adopt me' templates that new users pointlessly put on their pages, and then promote Adoption to the right type of user from WP:HD and WP:TH and other venues (such as certain help and guidance pages). It would become a means of giving one-to-one support for those users whose current Wikipedia editing would be improved by greater understanding of our working practices, but who are already able to show they have some broad editing experience under their belt. It would avoid POV editors, and those totally new users who clearly have no intention to stick around, from wasting the time of adopters. These adopters would be better off supporting those they can see already know the basics, but would now benefit from a period of more intensive or focussed guidance. It would meet the needs of those who have more tricky, and perhaps involved or long-term, questions that they might feel they can't ask at the Teahouse/Help desk. One example here. I did do a draft reworking of the AAU text some while ago, but haven't changed anything on the page as yet as it's going to take some long term commitment to steer it through, and gaining a bit of broad support. But AAU is regarded as having been in the doldrums for the last 8 to 10 years, and some of the old hands, like Swarm, seem keen to let someone have a go at reworking it. (I'm just not going to rush it, though, and still need to do find time to do more planning work on it). So, I hope you didn't think I was trying to tell you off in any way; I'm just keen that was, as Teahouse Hosts, don't AAU is a panacea, or mislead new editors by pushing them towards something that really won't meet their needs, and which will result in disappointment for them. ENDS