Pia Waugh wrote:
Let's leave name tags to the few extroverts happy to be welcomers. That way
if new people come and want to just be part of the crowd they can :)
heh, you're right of course, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek :) The
name-tag thing is all a bit north american for my taste. Participants in
a volunteer community will ultimately be themselves no matter what else
they're asked to do.
The point I was really trying to make was that attempting name-tags for
newcomers is likely in many cases to just alienate them. Which is
precisely the opposite of what is intended :
"Hi, I'm new here, patronise me!".
Ultimately they just want to be treated with some respect as
individuals, to feel that they're welcome as members of a thriving
dynamic community and some understanding that they're probably a bit
confused and lost while working out who is who and what is happening
around them.
I mean really, can you imagine how bizarre it would be to have people
sticking gold stars on your badge every time you did something useful?
It'd be like kindergarten :)
Everyone wearing name-tags, while perhaps seeming a bit daggy, could
actually be a cool thing. You could, for example, have a scheme where other
people could endorse a persons nametag for exceptional behaviour. You know,
Gold Stars for being helpful or something. Maybe you could endorse your
Terry
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