User:Banaticus/Adoption
I'm Banaticus and this is my Adoption page.
About me
[edit]Back in late 2008, I decided that I wanted to join the Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user program, but that I wanted to see what it was like to be adopted before I adopted another person. I contacted Addshore (who was accepting adoptions at that time) who then adopted me. We both took wikibreaks along the way and it wasn't until 2010 that I graduated from his adoption (normally adoption is a much shorter time process).
Why you are needed
[edit]Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia has 6,917,657 articles in well over 200 languages that are created and maintained by over 100 thousand contributors. Every month, Wikipedia has hundreds of millions of visitors. I won't give more definite numbers, since those are from 2010 and I don't want to keep updating this page every year so I'll simply say that Wikipedia has so many articles that nobody could possibly read them all. Even if a person had somehow managed to read every article on Wikipedia, articles are being created faster than the fastest reader can read. Even if a person had read every article and was staying abreast of every article being created, nobody can type fast enough to comment and respond to everything. And I haven't even touched on the Wikimedia sister projects which are huge projects of their own. Wikipedia thus relies on a large and diverse group of editors/volunteers to edit and manage everything.
Now, not every person is interested in everything, so there are a number of WikiProject's which are devoted to particular topics and categories of Wikipedia editing/maintenance, for people who are more interested in one field or one area than in something else. But even if you only want to edit in one particular area, it's good to at least learn how things are setup in most areas and what sorts of resources are available to you.
How you can help
[edit]Please click here to leave me a new message.
- Tell me what you know
- Tell me what you don't know
- Then tell me what you think
- Always distinguish which from which
-- Colin Powell from It Worked for Me
Before you do much of anything, you're going to want to review the basic principles of Wikipedia, the five pillars. You're also going to want to learn how to edit Wikipedia, which is where your first adoption lesson comes in. Click on that "five pillars" link and read it, taking as much time as you feel is necessary to follow the links on that page and the links on those pages, etc. Read up on the pillars and learn what they are, then leave me a message on the bottom of my talk page summarizing the five pillars for me -- pretend that I've never heard about them before and tell me all about what they are and what they mean. If you click the "click here to leave me a new message" link at the top of this paragraph, it will automatically add your message to my talk page in the right place.
Adoptees
[edit]Adoptees who are on wikibreak
[edit]Adoptees who go inactive for a month or more will be presumed to be on a wikibreak.