Project Welcome

Welcome!

Project Welcome is an Urban Dead Wiki member group dedicated to assisting new users to become valued members of the wiki community. We welcome all wiki members who share in the goal of enriching our community with new blood, and making this community a more welcoming place for all. It was created on February 10th, 2006 as a response to the increasingly anti-newbie attitude that the wiki community seemed to be taking.

What we do

We perform several activities as part of the Project:

• Show new people the ropes - If we see a user we've never met before make some mistakes on the wiki (editing templates instead of using them properly), instead of berating or ignoring the user, we'll go straight to their talk page and help them understand what they've done wrong, and how to do it right. No one was a perfect wiki editor straight off the bat, and sometimes a little guidance goes a long way.
• Welcome new users - Our community can only grow with new members, and so we work hard to welcome any new user who wants to edit our wiki, by going through Recent Changes, and welcoming those we've never seen, and who have never talked to others.
• Encourage tolerance in non-members - Not everyone is in Project Welcome, but the whole community needs to be involved. As much as is feasible, we try to defuse anger towards new members, as a single angry encounter can make someone who may become a valued member of our community leave prematurely. We also encourage users to make themselves open for Arbitration duties.
• Be a contact point for new users - New users can't know every procedure on the wiki off the bat, and we understand that sometimes the documentation around here isn't easily locatable. So, by showing that we are members by saying so on our user pages, we let new users know that we are available for assistance.
• Help new users help themselves - Sometimes the documentation around here isn't easily locatable, or particularly useful, even when it is locatable. As such, we try and improve the situation, by making documentation where there was no documentation before, by ensuring that the documentation that exists can be readily found by new users, and by making sure that the documentation that exists is useful to new members.

How to get involved

Project Welcome is an open project, and welcomes any user that wishes to get involved themselves. As long as you're committed to helping out new users, and helping make this community a civil and welcoming place, we're welcome to have you.

To officially join, you should place your name below on the Member register.

We also have a Message Box that can be used to identify users as members of Project Welcome. You can use it simply by putting the following on the top of your user page:

{{projectwelcome}}

Alternatively, you can use the spiffy new Project Welcome Userbox (so it fits neatly with the rest of your Userboxes) with the following codes:

{{projectwelcome2}}

{{smallwelcome2}}

Further, there's a fledgling convention of putting a link to Project Welcome within your signature. You can do this by doing the following:

1. Go to the Preferences page, accessible from the set of links at the top of the page (or alternately, by pointing to Special:Preferences.
2. Make sure you check the box labelled Raw signatures (without automatic link)
3. In the field "Your nickname (for signatures)", put the following (replacing Your name with your user name):

   [[User:Your Name|]] <sup>[[Project Welcome|W!]]</sup>

4. Press Save Preferences.

This will make your signature look exactly like it normally does, except it will now have ^W! appended to the end of your name, with a link to this page.

Useful Tools

As the process to find new users and welcome them to our community is always tedious and repetitive, some members made a template that you can use whenever you find a new user. To make use of it, simply put the following on the new user's talk page:

== Welcome to our Wiki ==
{{Welcomenewbie}}

--~~~~

or you can use the quicker version:{{subst:WN}}

That will make the {{Welcomenewbie}} template appear on their talk pages. It's basically a list with the most basic tips for the Suggestions page and general wiki editing. We invite all members to make use of and improve the template with more tips and a friendlier appearance.

If when checking a particular user's contributions you have doubts about this person's newbieness and fear he may as well feel insulted by being supposed new, you can always place the {{Welcomenewbie?}} template instead. You can use it like this:

== Hi {{PAGENAME}} ==
{{Welcomenewbie?}}

--~~~~

Keep in mind that there's always a slim possibility that someone will feel insulted if any of those templates is placed in his talk page, so use them with care and always give your best good faith explanations when confronted by not so thankful users in the wiki.

Flash points

Project Welcome identifies areas where the civility could really be improved, or at the very least where angers can flare up. We leave these here so that Project Welcome members may work to improve the situation there.

Category:Current_Suggestions and Developing Suggestions

These are probably one of the worst areas on the wiki in terms of civility. To many, the attacking of other users and creating a hostile environment is considered an important tactic in "improving suggestion quality". We highly recommend that Project Welcome members maintain their civility at all times, and attempt to follow up on the flaming of others to try and keep the exit rate on this segment of the wiki as low as possible.

Member Register

The easiest way to place your name on the register is to use 3 tildes (ie ~~~). Try to keep the list in alphabetical order as well as keeping the three columns as balanced as possible.

Project Welcome Members
Anime Sucks Bob Boberton Cheeseman Chekken DanceDanceRevolution Darth Sensitive Firetwig	The Gnome Haliman111 Headless gunner J3D Lelouch Linkthewindow	Lord Evans Misanthropy Oldharry101 OrangeGaf Rosslessness Sgt Martinez Suicidalangel