The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

There's been a lot of back-and-forth in threads lately about what is helpful to beginners/new Pagans and what isn't.  Everyone has an opinion, or seven, and those opinions often clash.  So, I thought I'd put the question out in the open where everyone can comment:

If you are a beginner or new to Paganism, what helps you?  What doesn't?

If you're more experienced, how do you help beginners (if at all)?  How does this clash with the expectations of others?

There's been a lot of back-and-forth in threads lately about what is helpful to beginners/new Pagans and what isn't.  Everyone has an opinion, or seven, and those opinions often clash.  So, I thought I'd put the question out in the open where everyone can comment:

If you are a beginner or new to Paganism, what helps you?  What doesn't?

If you're more experienced, how do you help beginners (if at all)?  How does this clash with the expectations of others?

 
My religion specifically addresses this, actually - I am to share what I can when I can, but I share what I HAVE, not what someone else WANTS me to have.

So if someone asks a question and the answer I have isn't the one they want, tough.  You asked.  I am REQUIRED to not bullshit people, even if it's what they want - that's against the Divine.

I would encourage beginners to ALWAYS search for their question first. Some people will object- "I can't parse this into a search box"- but everything can be searched, even if you're just using a deity's name or a color or a kind of food. Yes, you will get a lot of irrelevant answers, but it is no one's job to sort through that for you. If you can read, you are fully capable of doing it yourself.

Here's a strange bit of perspective on this though.

I'm not a newbie in paganism, far from it in fact. But I *am* a newbie in Santeria. Unfortunately, I took German in high school. That might have helped me through Nordic studies but...

Yeah, completely useless in Santeria.

So I come up with two distinct problems. The first is that there is very little information in English and the second is that there is very little decent information at all. I'm fortunate; I've got a wonderful friend who is also involved and is fluent in Spanish. Without her...I wouldn't have been able to stick to it.

I guess my point is that newbies are often insecure. I know I am. I'm constantly running things past my friend for confirmation or denial. And sometimes I'm sure that Wiccan and Pagan newbies would like that as well.

So I guess my point is that just because they're asking thousands of questions doesn't *necessarily* mean they're not doing the research. Of course, there will always be some...

I'm constantly running things past my friend for confirmation or denial.

And this is really a problem, if you are new to whatever (pagandom as a whole, or a certain field). Being new makes it difficult to evaluate the information in the right way.

Knowing someone with the knowledge and experience to give a distinct 'yay' or 'nay' is pretty much priceless.

If you're more experienced, how do you help beginners (if at all)?  How does this clash with the expectations of others?

I have an essay on my website about asking smart questions (it's inspired by a tech-related essay on the same topic)

http://gleewood.org/seeking/reaching-out/smart-questions/

And to address the "asking for confirmation" - the way to make this be less annoying to the people answering is to say "I've come across material suggesting X and Y. But this bit here, doesn't make sense to me: can someone help me?" (and a link/mention of the source is really helpful here)

It's a *lot* less annoying to answer than someone trying to mine for information to confirm something from another source without telling people where they're starting from. (This is the reason that in the library world, one of our early questions in reference interviews is "where have you already looked?")

On the more general question:

1) I'm a librarian. I like helping people find stuff out. No, really. I do it all the time even when people don't ask.

2) However, I'm a librarian. Work pays for me to help people learn stuff, even when being demanding, or have no idea what they're really looking for or whatever. I am not so obligated to help people on forums. (In-person teaching, I take on additional obligations to a student, even on a casual level.)

I am more inclined to help people on my own time who are some combination of appreciative, interesting, and asking stuff I have not already answered 20 times this week. Making it easy for me to figure out what they're wanting help with is a big bonus.

I am also more likely to take the time to comment if either the answer will be useful to other people reading (either because it's a general topic of interest, or because I have an idea of how to do the specific response that goes beyond that particular answer.) Or, because M'Lady has nudged me to reply, but one should not rely on that when drafting questions. (But really, mostly, when I write a reply, it's because I think it's useful to people beyond the actual person who asked.)

3) That last bit? If you ask a question that's been asked 10 times this week, I may pass it by. Ditto the questions where a little time with Google should solve it.

(If you ask me, however "I've tried Googling this, and I'm having problems." my librarian reflexes will engage, and you will get a "Here's more ways to narrow down search terms and mine the awesome power of the Internet with one hand behind your back" mini-lesson.)

4) Finally, there's a big complicated thing in my head about how part of learning to be part of a new religion is learning how that community works. That's hard work, but it's necessary (and for a variety of reasons, I think it's particularly necessary precursor work in the religious witchcraft religions)

That doesn't mean that a beginner should have people being outright insulting, or rude, or whatever to them. But it does mean that they need to spend some time figuring out how things work

- lurking and reading for a bit before posting a lot (which will also mean they see the stuff that comes up All The Time and can either avoid asking it, or say "Hey, I've read these three other posts about this, but I'm still confused about this part here." which is fundamentally a New Interesting Question for everyone else)

- spending some time figuring out how to ask a question well rather than dashing something off fast.

- doing some work to make connections on their own - whether that's connections between topics as search terms, connections with resources in whatever area, browsing through blogs/websites/etc. of posters whose stuff they like. There are tons of options.

If you are a beginner or new to Paganism, what helps you?  What doesn't?

 
I think I'm pretty well on the newbie-Pagan side of things.

So, things that help me.

-- Reading.  All sorts of reading.  Most of that, currently, is in the form of forum posts, and blogs, and other internet things, just because those are the resources it's easiest to get my hands on.  I think one of the reasons I keep hanging around TC, and not so much other Pagan forums I've joined, is because this place encourages indepth discussion.  I'm sure reading things I'm not as interested in (as someone else suggested) might be useful, but honestly, I don't really do that because I've only got limited time, and I'd like to spend it reading things that I think will be particularly relevant or interesting; if it turns out that other stuff is things I need to know, I'll read it then.  But not just reading, reading critically.  Sometimes I think maybe I'm too skeptical, but on the whole, I think that's better than accepting everything I read without question.  So I try to evaluate how relevant and useful to me are the things I read, and whether the ideas I come across are things I want to consider encorporating into my practice and worldview.

-- Getting an idea about a place before asking questions.  It always puzzles me that people don't seem to do this, and then get upset when they don't get the kind of answers they want.  I honestly don't understand this, because knowing the character of place can help you get useful information and answers from it.  For example, if reading through debates shows posters tend to a very vicious debate style (and no, I'm not thinking of TC; it's just the best illustration I can think of), it means I know that if I post something, they will respond to me in a similar style, and I can use that knowledge to keep myself from getting overly defensive at the harsh tone, and answer in a way that will continue the debate, instead of derailing into personal attacks.  Or if I'm not feeling up for that kind of debate, I know that's somewhere not to post before I do, and avoid subjecting myself to an unpleasant experience.

-- Asking questions (and reading the answers to other newbie questions).  I know the more experienced people must get tired of newbie questions, and I'm not saying I want to pester you all with questions when a quick google would get me the answer.  But, especially with Pagany topics, the quick google gets me material that is questionable at best, and outright misinformation, at worst.  Like my attempts to google "totem animals" when I was curious about the topic, which got me alot of not very helpful stuff, so it was very beneficial to have TC to come and ask about them, with people who could point me in useful directions, instead of floundering about on my own.

I see what you did there?  :whis:

I didn't intend to, but maybe that makes it funnier?  :

I find sensible answers to be helpful (which is oh so helpful, I'm sure. ).  I suppose if I'm clearly on a wrong track, I think a point-blank 'hey, X is a little nonsensical, Y is the thing I've found more helpful to research' is probably ideal.  I wish I could say that leading questions are awesome, but too often they do come across as condescending, at least if they stand alone.  

*nods* I agree with you about leading questions.  There are ways to ask them in a non-condescending way, but too often the tone is read as such even when it isn't meant that way.

There's been a lot of back-and-forth in threads lately about what is helpful to beginners/new Pagans and what isn't.  Everyone has an opinion, or seven, and those opinions often clash.  So, I thought I'd put the question out in the open where everyone can comment:

If you are a beginner or new to Paganism, what helps you?  What doesn't?

If you're more experienced, how do you help beginners (if at all)?  How does this clash with the expectations of others?

 
Its funny because on another forum I was on I was just talking about the death of forums and one of my biggest issues is when newbies come along and ask for help and people will jump on them for not searching and just reading the 8 million threads already on that topic.

I think there has to be some balance there. Because one reason people come to forums is that they want some feeling of personal community that reading doesn't give. So they want to be a part of the discussion.

At the same time ofcourse there are just lazy people who would love for you to sit and hold their hand and feed them all the answers.

So i think for new people it is important to have some balance where you can go the whole route of teaching a man to fish but still giving that sense of community and keeping new discussions alive.

I always try to answer someone's question as if it were unique and try to remember that they are new so while I may have answers it a million times before they haven't lol. And hopefully the person added a unique feel to the question & if not I ask for more info from them. While at the same time linking to more info that they may find helpful and giving them ideas on what to search for.

I also think it is very important to tell people that they need to think for themselves and that they can find a million different answers to a question but they have to go with what makes the most sense to them. Don't just blindly follow what you are told mostly.