I wanted to share an idea about trying a “buddy system” for the Keating Memorial self research. 
I was wondering if we want to try people paired with others, they commit to occasionally checking in on the other person & responding to updates (even just “that’s cool”, doesn’t need to be deep) – and their buddy checks in & responds to them.
I think that’s a great idea! If it is possible at all to be paired with a person that has a similar project, that would be fantastic. (I’ve actually recommended a buddy program for the users at the company I work at last month hehe).
@paula yeah, the tricky thing is figuring out how to do it! what pairings to suggest, or how to enable self sorting.
And I worry “what happens when a buddy is a no show or disappears” but maybe that’s premature (wait and see if/how it happens).
also I want to credit @gedankenstuecke for mentioning buddy approaches recently, that’s where the idea came from. 
An idea I’ve thought about was sending out a survey to gauge interest and have a multi select question for the type of research topics one is interested in/working on. That could help with self sorting and increasing the odds that the person will engage.
@paula that might help – but – I think maybe it just makes another “ask” for people that they might not get around to doing.… plus, I think figuring out the right categories might be challenging. And there’s also already the pre- survey that @gedankenstuecke and I made (I’m about to send reminders).
I think maybe it’d be easier to just make a best guess (for self-sorting too) based on what people have already posted, as it’s already public and they share whatever they care about.
… and maybe that would be an incentive for people to post, if they haven’t already! So they can get a buddy.
That makes sense, adding another task might not work out. Will the buddies be randomly assigned then?
I think if I could work out a self-sorting method (at least optionally), that would be a bit better. I’m going to need to think about it for a bit. 
I had suggested a buddy system in a slightly different context, but as @madprime said, I think it could be nicely applied here too. In addition to the limitations already mentioned, I think another limitation is that for the sorting to work, one needs to have a critical mass of people participating, otherwise it’ll be hard to find people with similar enough interests?
I like the idea of having somebody who shares responsibility of getting me to the next stage of my project by checking in, especially about barriers I face; and I’m glad to do that for somebody else.
Yeah… I like this idea but I’m not sure what the best way to go about this is. I’m wary of assigning people – whether that’s random or via some sense we have of “shared interest” – this stuff is personal projects, “assigned buddies” might feel irritating and overbearing.
A self-sorting idea I had:
If there’s people that get buddies but don’t have logs yet, check-ins could be via forum direct messages I guess?
There’s folks that have joined the activity but maybe are too busy or lost interest. If they don’t list themselves (step 1) then we can conclude they’re not actively participating in the activity (at least for now).
I think the self-sorting idea is really great. I’ve seen that used for conferences and other events where people offer/search for ride sharing/sharing hotel rooms etc and it seemed to work rather well!
I like the idea of some voluntary signal that people are interested in participating in a buddy program. I have concern that with self sorting, there will be people left without buddies. I’d assume people won’t randomly assign themselves, but rather buddy up with someone whose research they are interested in. This may or may not be ideal, but just wanted to bring it up.
agreed with concern about people not getting buddies, I’m hoping by telling people “pick at least one person that doesn’t have one” we can minimize that…
I’ve drafted what this might look like (posting below), see what you think!
(Topic subject: Self Research Buddies, Category: Project logs)
We’d like to encourage everyone doing & planning self research to have buddies! Buddies should check in regularly, to support each other with feedback and motivation.
And if you’ve still got some energy, do this next…
Adding a row for yourself: If you’re new & don’t have a log started – no worries! You can write an idea instead, e.g. “something sleep related”. Buddies can also check in via “direct message”.
Adding yourself as a buddy: You can buddy more than one person if you want (especially to “buddy back”!), but please try to buddy with at least one person that is currently “open”.
Handling inactive logs: Some folks on the list might not return and update. And that’s okay! Life is busy. 
But if it looks like someone’s gone (e.g. their buddy isn’t getting any responses), we may retire the log to an inactive list. (We can always bring it back!)
(end of drafted post)
Additional notes…
The above has a screenshot of the table because I didn’t want to ping everyone with a notification with just a draft. 
An example of a table is below.
| header 1 | header 2 | header 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Example | row | here |
| formatting | is | possible |
| here | is an | edit |
Also I’ve made this post a wiki – that means anyone should be able to edit it. Please feel free to try that out! Maybe you can improve this draft. 
I hope it works, that’s the format I would use in a new topic.
That looks good to me, will you make a new thread out of this to make the buddy list the first entry in the thread?
Right, posted as a new topic in “Research Logs”, pinned, with the subject drafted above.
Did you try editing? Maybe there should be an instruction on where to find the edit button. (There’s actually two, top right and bottom right, I think? And you could try editing the draft to add, as proof that it works…)
yep, found the button and edited the test table at the end
