Template talk:Welcomenewbie

I just (re)crafted this little thing here... seems a little more, friendlier--hagnat ^mod 00:22, 15 August 2006 (BST)

General Editing

Never delete someone else's edits, comments, responses, etc. off of community pages. To do so is considered vandalism. The correct way to sign an edit with a timestamp is "~~~~", and there's this button http://wiki.urbandead.com/skins/common/images/button_sig.png on the top of the edit page that writes it for you if you want. Just add ~~~~ to the end of your edit so that we can know who made it! You may want to know how your edits will look before they have been saved, to make sure that nothing is wrong. Use the "Preview" button before the "Save" button; it's your friend! If you're slow in your editing and there's an editing conflict, you might not understand the error that you get. The easiest way to overcome the edit conflict is to copy whatever you have been writing, go back with your browser, and then reenter the edit page so that you can add your edits without deleting those made before yours. Further help for editing the wiki can be found on the Help page.

Your User Page

One of the great things about the wiki is that every user can have his or her own user page! These pages are located in the User namespace — in other words, they all begin with "User:" (e.g., User:Your Username). The appropriate place to write about yourself or your characters is on your user page, or a subpage of that page (e.g., User:Your Username/Your Character's Name). Do not create pages about yourself outside of the User namespace. Those pages will be moved into subpages of your user page, and speedily deleted.

User Talk Pages

Every user has a talk page, found by clicking the "discussion" link at the top of his or her user page, or by going directly to it (e.g., User talk:Some User). If you have a question for someone, or want to say something to him or her, his or her user talk page is the place. However, many users on the wiki have established specific guidelines for how their user talk pages are to be treated — where new comments should go, how they should be written, what is or is not okay to talk about, etc. Be sure to look for guidelines on the talk page before you leave a comment. If you don't see any guidelines specified, the assumption is that you should place your comment at the bottom of the talk page, under a level 2 heading. This can be accomplished by clicking the "+" link next to the "edit" tab at the top of the talk page, or by manually typing in your message in this format: ==Message title== Your message goes here

The Suggestions Page

We know that as a new user, you want to share your ideas with us. But a community as big as ours has already seen all kind of suggestions, and it's possible that we've already seen something very similar to the ideas you have. Follow these simple guidelines to make sure that your suggestion gets the respect that it deserves: First of all, read the Suggestions Page's rules. We strongly recommend that you read the Suggestions Dos and Do Nots and the Frequently Suggested Ideas pages so that you will have an idea of what kind of suggestions are likely to be accepted and what kind are ridiculous in the eyes of the community. The pages might look long and time-consuming to read, but you will find them entertaining and helpful. It may be helpful to wait a few days to get a feel for the wiki and the other users before subjecting your idea to any possible criticism. If you're unsure, the Suggestions Discussion page is good neutral territory to suggest, gather feedback, and refine your idea before officially submitting it. Write your suggestion using the Suggestions template. If it looks too complicated for you, ask for help. You can't modify a suggestion that you've written once it has been posted on the Suggestions page. You can withdraw and resubmit it with changes later, but only do that if people liked your original suggestion while requesting changes, not if it was Spaminated.

Neat. --Niilomaan ^GRR! 09:24, 15 August 2006 (BST)

Bugs

Perhaps you should add a section on bug reporting? Many new players have no idea where to report a bug, nor do they bother to check all the features and figure them out before they try to report a bug. --V2Blast ^{T•P!•C•SR} 22:16, 17 May 2007 (BST)

May I redirect you to this discussion? People is currently trying to cut the template to a quarter -if not less- of its current size, so I can't tell you "it's a good avice, let's add it" no matter how much I want =). --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 03:17, 18 May 2007 (BST)

Project Mentor

Does anyone actually use this any more? Should we remove it? -- boxy ^{T L ZS Nuts2U DA} 14:46, 25 May 2007 (BST)

Being the rivals of Project Welcome, yes we should XD. Talking seriously, try asking its creator and/or some of the members to see if they are planning to "mentor" somebody, but I really don't know if they're still active within that project. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 14:49, 25 May 2007 (BST)

Well, after looking at their page history, although slow, they have been active in the last few days, mentoring a new person. Perhaps the welcomenewbie template "spamming" has done some good to their cause :) -- boxy ^{T L ZS Nuts2U DA} 14:57, 25 May 2007 (BST)

Oh, I was kind of behind my schedule on the spamming part due to my "out of town" status, but now I'll resume this massive annoyance in order to feed my ego continue helping the community =). --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 16:24, 25 May 2007 (BST)

Huh? Get rid of it?? I still use it quite a bit, as it links to many different pages on the wiki, not just the help and editing tips pages. Is the new template working? Anyone created a new account to see? --_Ducis ^Dux_Sloth^Talk 02:03, 26 May 2007 (BST)

Protection

I'm taking out the protected status from this template. It bothered me before, when it was first protected, because it's against the spirit of the template (when I first created it) to have it harder to edit. This is a project that I always want everyone to be involved, and even if "we Sysops are always available to edit it at first moment's notice", people will always see protection as a barrier and a template that's protected will scare users than otherwise would contribute to its improvement. Vandalism can always be reverted, but a guy giving its back can be forever. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 21:35, 16 June 2007 (BST)

Rewritting the suggestions part

Here is my proposition

The Suggestions Page

We know that as a new user, you want to share your ideas with us. But a community as big as ours has already seen all kind of suggestions, and it's possible that we've already seen something very similar to the ideas you have. Follow these simple guidelines to make sure that your suggestion gets the respect that it deserves: First of all, read the Suggestions Page's rules. We strongly recommend that you read the Suggestions Dos and Do Nots and the Frequently Suggested Ideas pages so that you will have an idea of what kind of suggestions are likely to be accepted and what kind are ridiculous in the eyes of the community. The pages might look long and time-consuming to read, but you will find them entertaining and helpful. It may be helpful to wait a few days to get a feel for the wiki and the other users before subjecting your idea to any possible criticism. If you're unsure, the Suggestions Discussion page is good neutral territory to suggest, gather feedback, and refine your idea before officially submitting it. Remember that suggestions put up on voting are considered to be complete. If you're looking for constructive critics or there are issues you're not sure how to balance - use Suggestions Discussion first. You might also want to look at the Previous Days Suggestions. These contain a record of all previous suggestions. Use the search function in your browser to search for keywords relating to the suggestion you want to make. Write your suggestion according to these steps. If it looks too complicated for you, ask for help. You can't modify a suggestion that you've written once it has been posted on the Suggestions page. You can withdraw and resubmit it with changes later, but only do that if people liked your original suggestion while requesting changes, not if it was Spaminated. Instructions of how to remove suggestions are here.

I've added more about importance of using talk:suggestions, as a lot of people still think they'll get critics/discussions and will be able to polish their yet rusty suggestion after they've put it on voting. (good example, check the history of page) Also i've put PDS a bit lower as less important that Talk and added link to instructions of how to remove suggestion.

I haven't yet modified the template with all of this, tell me what you think of it first, please--Duke Garland_T^{LCD SSZ} 12:13, 8 July 2007 (BST)

Damn I've been meaning to get back to this. Duke, go have a look in the discussion in the archives of my project page. In there you will see some interesting pointers you may find useful. --_Ducis ^Dux_Sloth^Talk 14:07, 8 July 2007 (BST)

Discussion of archives of project... give me just a straight link, please --Duke Garland_T^{LCD SSZ} 18:00, 8 July 2007 (BST)

Link --_Ducis ^Dux_Sloth^Talk 01:46, 9 July 2007 (BST)

D-eh. Well, i'll go with "as you wish, i don't care" option. current "suggestions" section blows. i proposed modification. let somebody fine it and implement. --Duke Garland_T^{LCD SSZ} 13:25, 13 July 2007 (BST)

How about we...?

How about we add a

== Welcome to our Wiki == 

as a header into the welcome newbie template, so it will automatically display it, instead of having to write it in? --User:Axe27/Sig 02:28, 12 July 2007 (BST)

Not a bad idea. Go ahead and test if it would work out before you add it. --_Ducis ^Dux_Sloth^Talk 04:42, 12 July 2007 (BST)

Alright, thanks for your opinion. --User:Axe27/Sig 18:58, 12 July 2007 (BST)

One teenie weenie problem - now every template posted before now has two headings, one by the poster, and one by the template. No biggie really. Users who leave it there on the talk page are inactive anyways. --_Ducis ^Dux_Sloth^Talk 12:47, 13 July 2007 (BST)

This bit

"As we can see, you're new to this wiki." If someone said that to me, I would think I must have made a mistake. Can someone reword that intro to avoid the problem? I can't think of something good to write. --  T   21:45, 4 August 2007 (BST)

Done. Is it any better? --~~~~_T^''' 22:26, 4 August 2007 (BST)

Yeah, way better. Cheers! --  T   09:20, 6 August 2007 (BST)

Added more formatting

--~~<noinclude>~</noinclude>~
<noinclude>

You shouldn't have to sign now. Please tell me of any problems there are. --User:Axe27/Sig 20:16, 7 October 2007 (BST)

Signing isn't a problem, and this thing doesn't even make the sign. More, it messes all templates already placed. I'm against --~~~~ [talk] 20:21, 7 October 2007 (BST)

Quick adding template

Ok, Axe27, this one is specially for you

{{subst:WN}}

Hoopla! This will add the header, the template call and sign. --~~~~ [talk] 20:45, 7 October 2007 (BST)

Boots of win! --User:Axe27/Sig 21:07, 7 October 2007 (BST)

Adding Something

Would it be okay to add ===Welcome to the Wiki to the template? As it is a popular addition?  Nalikill  ^{TALK  E!  W!  M!  USAI}  18:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it was suggested above and explanation why it is bad is because people will be wiping template instead of template call by clicking [edit] link if this will be added. Just use the feature i created and you won't have problems --~~~~ [talk] 18:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Template with just the "template"

I made this template for people who just want the template without all the text. Occasionally, I prefer to give a more personalized welcome message (especially after their suggestion has been spammed or duped,) and the text gets in the way. If anyone else wants to use it, go ahead. Linkthewindow ^Talk 11:44, 17 October 2008 (BST)

This Procedure Should be Discontinued.

So, as some of you may or may not know, I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, which, as you are aware, writes this wiki software and runs Wikipedia. As you might be able to derive from that bit of information, I, uh, know a lot about wikis, wiki communities, and the research that goes into what's going on with them.

A couple weeks ago we had an interesting talk with a couple researchers who were studying the patterns of editor retention on en, de, and fr. Specifically, they tracked the life-cycle of editors from first edit to never returning. This cycle could (and did) include editors moving into administrators. However, even administrators quit eventually.

One thing they discovered was that, surprisingly, "welcomenewbie" templates turned more people away than they helped to retain. There is a clear correlation about this. In fact, simply doing nothing is better than splatting a template onto a user's page: mechanically inserted text (such as welcome templates) give users the impression that the wiki is not a community but rather a system of software, which is typically the exact opposite impression desired.

When welcoming new editors, it was shown that the best thing to do is to write personal notes in a positive tone. The next best thing is to simply say nothing.

The fastest way to get an editor to leave is to revert them and leave a negative template on their talk page; the next fastest is to revert without response; the next level is to leave a template of any kind.

You can read their paper here if it is of interest to you.

Something to think about. --jorm 00:27, 23 July 2010 (BST)

We've been discussing this recently, if you want to add to that we'd appreciate the insight. I've been pushing for a move to plain text subst templates, possibly geared towards the actions that the new user has been taking. 00:32, 23 July 2010 (BST)