Wikipedia talk:Teahouse/Wishlist

How about a Wikipedian Primer?

Pluma created a great resource that may deserve a spot in the Teahouse: His Adoption page and tasks.

Background

I looked for a mentor; ended up editing the Adopters page to move several from the active to the inactive section. Every potential mentor who indicated an interest in science articles was inactive or gone. Talk pages of those who leave Wikipedia remain in existence and can even have recent edits and additions, a way to really confuse newbies. I learned to check the main user page to discover those who are gone.

Tried looking in the Newbie page but I wasn't confident enough to ask. I know, there are no stupid questions but I didn't know enough to formulate a decent question.

Tried adding {{subst:dated|adoptme}} to my talk page; removed it after a couple of weeks with no response. Perhaps I frightened potential help away with my detailed description of what I hoped to accomplish?

Tried muddling through the hundreds of pages of policies and guidelines and templates and infoboxes and such. Progress was painfully slow. I still wasn't sure if I correctly constructing my articles. I stumbled across Project Birds, now my wikihome.

Still searching for help, I went back to the Adopters page and found Pluma. Although he was busy ("on a wikibrak") and unable to provide active mentorship, his page included homework for adoptees. I decided to do mine.

Help for Newbies

Pluma's Adoption homework was the perfect introduction to Wikipedia. On my own, it took me a couple of weeks to learn what he introduced in the first lesson. I finished the next five lessons in one night.

When I finished, I could meaningfully contribute to Wikipedia and the community. I don't spend a lot of time patrolling new pages but I go to the back of the list and knock a couple off the unpatrolled backlog almost every time I'm on. I compliment good efforts, guide those even more clueless than me and propose speedy deletion when needed. My first article is in mainspace. Two more, a revision and a new one, are under construction in subpages of my sandbox.

Pluma would likely approve of his work being used by more Wikinewbies. It definitely helped me. DocTree (talk) 19:08, 14 April 2012 (UTC)