bus

I was just thinking, do we have a thread anywhere were people can ask to be adopted by a current BUS member or ask for friends?

PM'ing new people is good, and I think the welcome wagon does really help people feel more welcome (yay us!) but I think it has its limits. It's hard to make friends on a board like this.

On other forums I've adopted various new members, and have had nothing but positive feedback about it. I also post on several forums which have a thread or section dedicated to people asking to be adopted by an experienced board member and/or asking for buddies.

How the adoption system works on another forum I use is that people post saying "I'd like to be adopted" or "I want to adopt somebody" and then people can post saying "(username), I'll adopt you!" or "(username), I want to be adopted!" or they can PM the person if they like. Its less scary than asking somebody directly.

The buddy forum works slightly differently. Anyone can make a thread asking for buddies and/or pen pals, some people ask for people thier own age, or the same gender, or the same sexuality/religion or who live in thier country/city or whatever. I've used it when I've felt lonely and wanted a new friend and it works great.

Does anybody else think we could start some sort of system like this?

I can't point you in the direction of it as i have no idea where it was, but there was a 'family' thread where you could create a 'family' on bus, where you would say if you wanted a mum/daughter/brother etc. and people would offer themselves.

I can try to find it, how much luck i will have i don't know. Shall keep you informed.

Here we go. Clickey

Is that the kind of thing you meant?

Thanks for tracking that down for me Alex, I knew there was something similar.

I still think it's not really the same, because that sort of thing ends up just being a system where BUSsers who already know one another add each other to thier signatures and it doesn't provide people with real "buddies" in quite the same way but maybe I'm totally wrong. Sometimes different boards work in different ways though and I know I shouldnt assume what works on one would work on another.

This idea has been discussed amoungst mods previously when this idea was last mentioned. There were a few issues people had with it and nothing else was really said on the matter, thats not to say the answer to such a thing was a definitive no, but as i say there were a few quibbles with it. Seeing as you put this in the suggestion box other mods can hopefully discuss through the issues they had and go from there.

Though even if the end result would be a no to an adoption sticky/forum etc. i can't see any reason why such a thread could not be started as a 'normal' thread in distractions or random weirdness or whatever? Though that might be something to talk about?

My brain isnt quite in gear today..