Reach out is a program aimed at allowing users to bring issues that they have had in Wikipedia to a listening, sympathetic and caring audience:
"No one can know how we feel if we do not say. We cannot expect to get understanding if we do not ask for it. No one will dispute that sometimes life's issues are too much for one person. It is fair to say that sometimes Wikipedia's problems fall under the same heading. This is a place where you can bring the bruises that can sometimes be got on this project for attention."
The Stress alertsprogram aims at identifying users who are stressed, alerting the community of thier stress and works in tandem with the Stressbusters at trying to identify causes of stress and eliminating them.
Note from the editor
Welcome to this new format of the Esperanza Newsletter, which came about during the last Advisory Council meeting - we hope you like it! The major changes are that each month, right after the Council meeting, this will be sent out and will include two featured programs and a sum up of the meeting. Also, it will be signed by all of the Advisory Council members, not just Celestianpower. Have an Esperanzial end of March, everyone!
The Barnstar Brigade is a new program aimed at giving more very deserving yet unappreciated users barnstars. It will officially start on 2006-04-09, but signing up is encouraged before this date:
"Here in Wikipedia, there are hundreds of wikipedians whose work and efforts go un-appreciated. One occasionally comes across editors who have thousands of good edits, but because they may not get around as much as others, their contributions and hard work often go un-noticed. Sadly, these editors often leave the project. As Esperanzians, we can help to make people feel appreciated, be it by some kind words or the awarding of a Barnstar. A project the size of Wikipedia has thousands of editors, so there are plenty of people out there who deserve recognition, one just has to find them. The object of this program is not to flood editors with Barnstars, but to seek out people who deserve them, and make them feel appreciated."
The Stress alertsprogram aims at identifying users who are stressed, alerting the community of thier stress and works in tandem with the Stressbusters at trying to identify causes of stress and eliminating them.
Information
Welcome to the second issue of the new format Esperanza Newsletter - we hope you still like it! This week, it was delivered diligently by our new dogsbody. MiszaBot (run by Misza13): any execution complaints should go to him. Content comments should be directed at the Esperanza talkpage. Thanks!
The current process for accepting proposals for new programs has been deemed fine. All Advisory Council members and the Admin Gen are to endevour to be bold when viewing discussion. If they feel that consensus has been reached, they will act accordingly.
A plea from the editor...
The propsed programs page is terribly underused! Please leave any comments, good or bad, on the page, to help us determine the membership's thoughts on the ideas there.
I'm truly sorry about the belated reply, but I really really wanted to thank you - your concern in my absence and your get-well wishes really mean a lot to me. The beautiful award you gave me has touched me deeply. I have taken note of the great deal of effort you've put in our WikiProject while I've been away. Now, more than ever, it is only because of you and a handful of special people that it has developed itself into a great community. Thank you, dear Aaron!
The Administrator Coaching program is a program aimed at preparing Wikipedians for Adminship or helping them understand the intricacies of Wikipedia better. Recently, changes have been made to the requirements of coachees. Please review them before requesting this service.
This would be something like the Welcoming Committee, but for people who have figured out the basics of editing articles; they're not newcomers any more, but they might want some help in learning new roles. Some might like suggestions about how to learn vandal patrol, or mentoring on taking an article to featured status, or guidance with a proposal they plan to make at the Village Pump, for example. In this way, Esperanza would help keep hope alive for Wikipedia because we would always be grooming the next generation of admins.
The Stressbusters are a subset of Esperanza aiming to investigate the causes of stress. New eyes on the situation are always welcome!
Note from the editor
As always, MiszaBot handled this delivery. Thank you! Also, congratulations go to Pschemp, Titoxd and Freakofnurture for being elected in the last elections! An Esperanzial May to all of the readership!
Posting logs of the Esperanza IRC channel are explicitly banned anywhere. Violation of this rule results in deletion and a ban from the channel.
A disclaimer is going to be added to the Esperanza main page. We are humans and, as such, are imperfect.
Various revisions have been made to the Code of Conduct. Please see them, as the proposal is ready to be ratified by the community and enacted. All members will members to have to re-confirm their membership after accepting the Code of Conduct.
Referendums are to be held on whether terms of AC members should be lengthened and whether we should abolish votes full stop.
...my dear Aaron, one of the greatest Wikipedians and brightest persons around, whose kindness, dedication and pride are simply inspiring. With all my gratitude for your friendship, your support and your help, Phaedriel
Dear Aaron, now that the Wikiproject is firmly established and most of the assessment work is well-developed, I've been thinking about making a Newsletter and send it to every member of the project. Perhaps inviting some of the most active members like Rockero and Skookum and preparing it at a temp page between all of us would be better, and then sending it to make sure the project remains as active as it currently is may be a good idea. What do you think? Big hugs, Phædriel♥tell me - 19:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A month sounds great to me; it is a reasonable time to assess the progress made in the Project and ellaborate some guidelines based on the current needs and suggestions made at the Talk page, imho. Btw, dear Aaron, in case you have not seen, Lar has given us some advice at my Talk page; I believe we can benefit from that experience. Unfortunately, I'm kinda short of time these days, so I'll try to make a temp page for us to get started and ellaborate it when we can. Feel free to get the idea moving, if you wish! Big hug, Phædriel♥tell me - 18:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Aaron for the award! I like contributing to articles just for the sake of knowledge, but your award makes it a bit more gratifing. I had no idea that there was an award system on wikipedia. Again thanks!--Manny01:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As you may have gathered, discussions have been raging for about a week on the Esperanza talk page as to the future direction of Esperanza. Some of these are still ongoing and warrant more input (such as the idea to scrap the members list altogether). However, some decisions have been made and the charter has hence been amended. See what happened. Basically, the whole leadership has had a reshuffle, so please review the new, improved charter.
As a result, we are electing 4 people this month. They will replace JoanneB and Pschemp and form a new tranche A, serving until December. Elections will begin on 2006-07-02 and last until 2006-07-09. If you wish to run for a Council position, add your name to the list before 2006-07-02. For more details, see Wikipedia:Esperanza/June 2006 elections.
Excellent work on that award, dear Aaron! It looks great, and displays perfectly after the enhancements you made to it. Also, it appears as it will be approved at the Barnstars Proposals page, so here's to yet one more success of our WikiProject - all thanks to you! :)
Btw, I created a subpage to get the Newsletter going - right now, we need to be sure what to say, and we can work on the how later (layout, template, etc). I'll make sure to invite some members to tag along, but please feel free to start adding your thougts right away. I'll drop by during the weekend, you can be sure ;) Kisses, Phædriel♥tell me - 03:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's a great draft, dear Aaron, and I think there's very little we could add; maybe announcing the creation of Portal:Indigenous peoples of North America could be of interest too, what do you think? Maybe also writing a short resume of everything we've done so far could be in order, as this will be the first issue. As soon as we have agreed in the contents, I'll design a layout to format it and deliver it. Btw, what do you think of the revamp of the Project? I'm investing all my available time into migrating the comments, and it's quite a lot of work. I've been wanting to redesign the Open Tasks too, and maybe we should focus there before proceeding with the comments migration, as there's quite plenty of work to do (missing articles, revieeing the categories after these 6 months, commenting unassessed articles, etc.) As usual, great work! :) TTYL, and a big hug, Phædriel♥tell me - 01:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Excelent, Aaron hun! The newsletter is ready, way to go! I'll now put some format to it, and it'll be ready for delivery in no time :) As soon as it is decently designed, we can simply transclude it on to the members' talk pages. Btw, you're more than welcome to step in and change and add stuff at the Portal - in fact, I'd be delighted if you did. Hugs, and congrats on a job well done! Phaedriel♥The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 07:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Indigenous Peoples of North America Portal has been established, as a starting point for those wishing to learn more about the subject, with information and links on a wide variety of issues. It also contains news regarding the continent's various tribes and nations. It's a graphically pleasing site, and everyone is encouraged to check it out.
The project's talk page template has been updated, along with the classification system, to include the assessment on the talk pages of the articles that have been classified and assessed.
Balance
As the Project reaches its first six months of activity, the great effort all of you have invested in it has turned the vast information available on Indigenous North American topics from a deorganized cumulous into an excellent and easy to consult database. Although much work is still in order, few WikiProjects are able to obtain the amazing results we are proud to show today. To all of you, thank you and congratulations!
The assessment of articles within the scope of the project is still an ongoing process. We need people to help in this who are not contributors to the articles they are assessing. Also, there is the ongoing need for identifying and cataloguing articles that fall within the scope of this project. As of today, nearly 1,500 have been identified within the Project's scope.
The Esperanza To-Do List is a place where you may list any request, big or small, for assistance. If you need help with archiving your usertalk, for example, all you need to do is list it here and somebody will help you out. Likewise, if you need help with some area of editing on Wikipedia, list it here! Again, any matter, trivial or not, can be placed on this page. However, all matters listed on this page must not be of an argumentative nature. You do not need to be a member of Esperanza (or this program) to place or fulfill requests on this page. If you don't have any requests, consider coming by and fulfilling a few! This program has not been very active, but has lots of potential!
What's New?
In order to help proposed programs become specific enough to make into full-fledged programs, the In development section of the proposals page has been created. Proposals that are promising, but need to be organized in more detail are listed here. Please take a look at what is there, and help the proposals turn into programs.
To improve both the layout and text of the front page, in an attempt to clarify the image of Esperanza, the front page is going to have some redesigning take place. Please take your creative minds to Wikipedia:Esperanza/Front page redesign to brainstorm good ideas.
Many thanks to MiszaBot, courtesy of Misza13, for delivering the newsletter.
In order to make sure all users who join Esperanza are welcomed, a list of volunteers who are willing to welcome new Esperanzians is at Wikipedia:Esperanza/Members#Esperanza_welcomers. Please add yourself if you are interested; we want to make sure all new Esperanza members are welcomed!
The In development section of the proposals page has been created.
Proposals page: Some proposals have been moved to the aforementioned "In development" section, some have been left as a proposal, and others have been archived. For those proposals that were a good idea but didn't necessarily constitute a program, General Esperanzial Actions has been created.
Two small pieces of charter reform will be decided on in a straw poll at Wikipedia talk:Esperanza/Governance. One involves filling the position of any councillors who may leave, the other involves reforming the charter.
Until cooperation with the Kindness Campaign is better defined, it remains as a proposed program.
Although having the newsletter appear on everyone's userpage is desired, this may not be ideal for everyone. If, in the future, you wish to receive a link to the newsletter, rather than the newsletter itself, you may add yourself to Wikipedia:Esperanza/Newsletter/Opt Out List.
21:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
