Adopt a “Newbie” Challenge

Have you seen Audrey Stevenson’s weekly badge roundup blog posts yet? Here’s this week’s installment of the ongoing series, in which Audrey congratulates the members of our community who have completed missions and achieved badges the previous week. In the spirit of becoming a more welcoming community, I encourage you to look at these roundup blog posts each week and find someone new to reach out to and connect with.

Now, in fairness, many of these members are not “newbies” per say – rather newly active. Our objective with this challenge is to inspire more participation from all of our members through peer encouragement.

Let’s start by reviewing the table Audrey has published. It includes a list with links to each member’s profile and an image of the badge(s) that member achieved. I’d recommend starting with focusing on either the Blogger badge  or the Solver badge . People who achieved these badges have taken their first steps in contributing meaningfully to our community by either publishing their first blog post or providing their first answer that was accepted by the question author.

Once you’ve identified a member (or two) to connect with, go ahead and click through to their profile.  If you’ve chosen a member who has achieved the Blogger badge, you should see at least one blog post on their profile page:

Click on the blog post title and check out what they’ve published. Do you appreciate what they’ve published? Give the post a Like!  Do you have some constructive feedback to help them become a stronger blogger? Leave a comment!

If you’ve chosen a member who achieved the Solver badge, you can also find their Answers on their profile page:

Choose the Question that has the green check icon by clicking on the title. This icon means the answer was accepted and is likely the answer that the member received their badge for.

Here’s your part – Check out the accepted answer.  If you agree with the answer or feel it was a valuable contribution, give it an upvote. If you disagree with the answer or feel it needs clarification, leave a comment on the answer. If you feel there is a better way to achieve a solution, create a new answer to the question and share your ideas.

Either way, we want to encourage discussion and participation from those who seek to share their knowledge. Personally, I also like to thank members for their time in creating an answer or comment – even if I disagree with it! They took the time to respond and share their perspective and that’s worth gratitude.

This is a simple task that we can all pursue that will help encourage new members to become more active, be productive contributors, and help build the strength of our community. You may also find that there are members out there who are creating interesting content that you’ve never noticed in the past. Feel free to give them a follow to stay up to date with their latest and greatest.

Don’t forget to follow Audrey Stevenson to get notifications for the weekly badge roundups!