Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Keegan Peterzell
Automated welcome message are tricky on the English Wikipedia, because it's
a tricky place to figure out why someone is editing, and how to communicate
with them.  A large number of contributors with new accounts either do not
have a native level of English, are editing just because they can, are
editing for promotional purpose (intentional or not), or simply don't know
what to do.  Reading the account's contribution history helps, as
WereSpielChequers notes, but that doesn't tell when to template or when to
simply write.

Because of this, I think it is important that we foster intuition on what
to write.  If the account seems to be wanting simple information on how to
edit based on lack of skill, I'll leave a sentence or two saying hello and
follow with the welcome template.  If the account's edits need personal
interaction, I'll just write three or four sentences saying hello with a
couple links followed by information on what seems to be the problem with
their edits.  I think this is fairly standard among those used to helping.

It's a flowchart.  If it does exist, please link.  If not, please make :)

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Cynthia Ashley-Nelson
I'm gonna hafta (sic) work on my handwriting. It's atrocious. ;) Have to
good night!

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Michael Snow  >wrote:
>
> > Wow, handwritten? I didn't know MediaWiki was going to skip straight past
> > WYSIWYG to OCR. Is it time to start weeding out editors with bad
> penmanship?
> >
>
> Wikipedians: they cut you no slack whatsoever for imprecise adjectives,
> even if it's 9:30 at night. :)
>
> Steven
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Cindy Ashley-Nelson
"Yes. *Her again.*"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Steven Walling
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Michael Snow wrote:

> Wow, handwritten? I didn't know MediaWiki was going to skip straight past
> WYSIWYG to OCR. Is it time to start weeding out editors with bad penmanship?
>

Wikipedians: they cut you no slack whatsoever for imprecise adjectives,
even if it's 9:30 at night. :)

Steven
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Michael Snow

On 3/22/2012 9:00 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

On Mar 22, 2012 8:46 PM, "Cynthia Ashley-Nelson"
wrote:

In Twinkle, we can add a custom Welcome message. Is it possible to create a
customized Welcome template that allows the user to insert a personalized
message to the Twinkle interface? Or even make changes to the existing
templates that allows users to insert a personal message prior to placing
on the user's talk page?

Yes, this not difficult at all to add to Twinkle, and if the maintainers of
the gadget are willing I think this should be one of the experiments we
try. The idea of prompting normal handwritten comments as part of the
interface was also suggested in the feedback from our recent test of PROD
and AfD templates in Twinkle.
Wow, handwritten? I didn't know MediaWiki was going to skip straight 
past WYSIWYG to OCR. Is it time to start weeding out editors with bad 
penmanship?


More seriously, while a wiki may not be a social network for its own 
sake, I do think it's worth emphasizing that collaboration depends on 
some sort of human connection. Bots can be great tools to facilitate 
work, but they do nothing to facilitate connections.


--Michael Snow


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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Steven Walling
On Mar 22, 2012 8:46 PM, "Cynthia Ashley-Nelson" 
wrote:
>
> In Twinkle, we can add a custom Welcome message. Is it possible to create
a
> customized Welcome template that allows the user to insert a personalized
> message to the Twinkle interface? Or even make changes to the existing
> templates that allows users to insert a personal message prior to placing
> on the user's talk page?

Yes, this not difficult at all to add to Twinkle, and if the maintainers of
the gadget are willing I think this should be one of the experiments we
try. The idea of prompting normal handwritten comments as part of the
interface was also suggested in the feedback from our recent test of PROD
and AfD templates in Twinkle.

Steven

>
>
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Will Takatoshi wrote:
>
> > WereSpielChequers wrote:
> >
> > >... our steadily increasing proportion of spammers
> >
> > Where are you seeing that?  I've been monitoring COIBot report
> > contribution numbers and it seems about constant over the years to me.
> >
> > > and the large increase in our proportion of vandals since 2005
> >
> > The proportion of vandalism peaked in 2007 per
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_statistics Has it
> > been on the rise again?  ClueBot NG's contribution's over time seemed
> > to be relatively low before its recent outage and training reset
> > compared to 2010. Counting ClueBot NG contributions per hour makes it
> > seem like they are still lower than 2007 levels, but they start and
> > stop in  bursts so I can't get a good idea of the trend without more
> > work.
> >
> > I want to clarify to John Vandenberg and others that I do approve of
> > the Foundation's very important work on editor retention and
> > recruitment, and on the current initiatives such the Article Feedback
> > Tool which are in many ways quality-focused, but I think additional
> > Foundation efforts on content quality are simply not necessary at
> > least until the recruitment and retention numbers stop declining.
> >
> > -Will
> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> Best regards,
>
> Cindy Ashley-Nelson
> "Yes. *Her again.*"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Cynthia Ashley-Nelson
In Twinkle, we can add a custom Welcome message. Is it possible to create a
customized Welcome template that allows the user to insert a personalized
message to the Twinkle interface? Or even make changes to the existing
templates that allows users to insert a personal message prior to placing
on the user's talk page?




On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Will Takatoshi wrote:

> WereSpielChequers wrote:
>
> >... our steadily increasing proportion of spammers
>
> Where are you seeing that?  I've been monitoring COIBot report
> contribution numbers and it seems about constant over the years to me.
>
> > and the large increase in our proportion of vandals since 2005
>
> The proportion of vandalism peaked in 2007 per
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_statistics Has it
> been on the rise again?  ClueBot NG's contribution's over time seemed
> to be relatively low before its recent outage and training reset
> compared to 2010. Counting ClueBot NG contributions per hour makes it
> seem like they are still lower than 2007 levels, but they start and
> stop in  bursts so I can't get a good idea of the trend without more
> work.
>
> I want to clarify to John Vandenberg and others that I do approve of
> the Foundation's very important work on editor retention and
> recruitment, and on the current initiatives such the Article Feedback
> Tool which are in many ways quality-focused, but I think additional
> Foundation efforts on content quality are simply not necessary at
> least until the recruitment and retention numbers stop declining.
>
> -Will
>
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> foundation-l mailing list
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-- 

Best regards,

Cindy Ashley-Nelson
"Yes. *Her again.*"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Will Takatoshi
WereSpielChequers wrote:

>... our steadily increasing proportion of spammers

Where are you seeing that?  I've been monitoring COIBot report
contribution numbers and it seems about constant over the years to me.

> and the large increase in our proportion of vandals since 2005

The proportion of vandalism peaked in 2007 per
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_statistics Has it
been on the rise again?  ClueBot NG's contribution's over time seemed
to be relatively low before its recent outage and training reset
compared to 2010. Counting ClueBot NG contributions per hour makes it
seem like they are still lower than 2007 levels, but they start and
stop in  bursts so I can't get a good idea of the trend without more
work.

I want to clarify to John Vandenberg and others that I do approve of
the Foundation's very important work on editor retention and
recruitment, and on the current initiatives such the Article Feedback
Tool which are in many ways quality-focused, but I think additional
Foundation efforts on content quality are simply not necessary at
least until the recruitment and retention numbers stop declining.

-Will

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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Nathan
; >   4. Re: User talk templates (En Pine)
> >   5. Re: User talk templates (David Gerard)
> >   6. Re: User talk templates (En Pine)
> >   7. Re: User talk templates (David Gerard)
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:53:47 -0700
> > From: Ray Saintonge 
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> >
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
> > Message-ID: <4f6af6ab.30...@telus.net>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> >
> > On 03/22/12 1:37 AM, En Pine wrote:
> > > First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message
> > to the user?s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but
> also
> > for Commons, Simple, and other projects? Currently we require a human to
> do
> > this, which means that lots of people seem not to get welcome messages
> > which could contain useful information, and perhaps a link to the
> Teahouse
> > for EN users. Could we implement an automated post to a user?s talk page
> > that gives the user links to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or
> > other similar resources as soon as the user has registered?
> > >
> > This is a terrible idea, on a par with automated telephone messages
> > which ask you to make selections by number.
> >
> > The other point is that many new registrants never edit at all, or they
> > may be vandals or spammers.  Let them make their intentions clear before
> > welcoming them.  The welcome should show that we are aware of exactly
> > what they have done, and thank them for doing so even if it's only a
> > simple spelling correction.
> >
> > Ray
> >
> >
> >
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread WereSpielChequers
Making sure that all goodfaith newbies get welcomed is a great idea, but at
registration is not the right time. One of the consequences of Single User
Login is that an active editor who starts clicking interwiki links will
quickly they find themselves registered on shedloads of wikis, even if they
haven't got the fonts installed to see the scripts on that wiki and were
just clicking to see if another language used the same photo or maybe had a
reference they could click. Combined with our steadily increasing
proportion of spammers and the large increase in our proportion of vandals
since 2005, there is a good case for not doing an auto welcome until
someone has done some goodfaith edits.

Another good argument that has come up on EN wiki is that manual welcomes
are probably better than blanket templated ones. I think it would be worth
testing this, we know that welcomed users are more likely to keep editing
than unwelcomed ones. But we don't currently know that a targeted welcome
is more effective than a bot one. My expectation is that if we tested this
we would find that a welcome from someone who has just interacted with you,
such as by categorising or wikifying the article you've just started, is a
more positive welcome than from someone who has tempated or even deletion
tagged your contributions. Of course newbies are unlikely to be aware that
many welcomes come from editors who have marked their new article as
patrolled or checked their edit and noticed that t wasn't vandalism.

One way to combine automated welcomes with manual ones would be to use
automation as a backstop. This could be done with an automated welcome
which only went to editors who met all the following criteria:

   1. Editor has done more than 10 edits
   2. Editor has  edited today
   3. Editor first edited more than 7 days ago
   4. Editor is not currently blocked
   5. Editor has not previously been welcomed
   6. Editor's  userpage does not have one of the templates declaring them
   to be an alternate account
   7. Editor is not flagged as a bot

WereSpielChequers

On 22 March 2012 12:00,  wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: User talk templates (Ray Saintonge)
>   2. Re: User talk templates (Fae)
>   3. Re: User talk templates (Tim Starling)
>   4. Re: User talk templates (En Pine)
>   5. Re: User talk templates (David Gerard)
>   6. Re: User talk templates (En Pine)
>   7. Re: User talk templates (David Gerard)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:53:47 -0700
> From: Ray Saintonge 
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
> Message-ID: <4f6af6ab.30...@telus.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> On 03/22/12 1:37 AM, En Pine wrote:
> > First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message
> to the user?s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but also
> for Commons, Simple, and other projects? Currently we require a human to do
> this, which means that lots of people seem not to get welcome messages
> which could contain useful information, and perhaps a link to the Teahouse
> for EN users. Could we implement an automated post to a user?s talk page
> that gives the user links to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or
> other similar resources as soon as the user has registered?
> >
> This is a terrible idea, on a par with automated telephone messages
> which ask you to make selections by number.
>
> The other point is that many new registrants never edit at all, or they
> may be vandals or spammers.  Let them make their intentions clear before
> welcoming them.  The welcome should show that we are aware of exactly
> what they have done, and thank them for doing so even if it's only a
> simple spelling correction.
>
> Ray
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Bod Notbod
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:02, Fae  wrote:

> It's been discussed on-wiki before and firmly rejected (too lazy to
> dig it out).

In the spirit of co-operation, I shall dig for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Use_a_bot_to_welcome_new_users

Bod

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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Steven Walling
These are both great questions Pine.

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:37 AM, En Pine  wrote:

> First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message to
> the user’s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but also for
> Commons, Simple, and other projects? Currently we require a human to do
> this, which means that lots of people seem not to get welcome messages
> which could contain useful information, and perhaps a link to the Teahouse
> for EN users. Could we implement an automated post to a user’s talk page
> that gives the user links to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or
> other similar resources as soon as the user has registered?
>

As Tim said, there is actually an extension which can do this, and it's
used on several projects, including the Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Chinese, and
Romanian Wikipedias (among others).

Personally speaking, I think that we should treat automated welcoming of
any kind with healthy skepticism. But the great part of running A/B tests
(however hack-y our system is) is that we don't have to make our consensus
decisions based just on gut instinct about how people will react to
different communitication methods.

To that end, we're currently testing a few different welcomes delivered via
this extension on the Wikimedia Incubator:
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incubator:Template_testing

The reason we're doing tests at all is because in our first A/B test, we
confirmed our working hypothesis that enough people read these templates to
make changing their contents actually worthwhile.

As others have pointed out though, it's actually more likely that people do
not *really* read fully automated welcome messages from bots, so the most
important thing I want to learn from the Incubator test is whether we can
see any statistically significant difference in the activity of editors who
receive these various welcomes.


> Second, has anyone looked at non-English Wikipedias, especially any that
> show better editor retention than EN’s, to check for best practices
> regarding the languages used on templates?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pine
>

This is a really important thing. We've done some research in prep for
non-English tests we've ran, and I can give you some anecdotes etc., but no
one has done a comprehensive survey. If you want to help work on one, I'm
happy to start it!

Last but not least, there are links to all the local coordination pages and
ongoing research on Meta.[1] If you're from EN, PT, or DE Wikipedias, there
are WikiProjects to join which have their own localized documentation
already, and we're definitely open to doing tests on new wikis.

Steven

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_A/B_testing
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Cynthia Ashley-Nelson
Very good ideas Nathan. FWIW, I've only been reading this list for about a
year and a half or so. I present a lot of welcome messages, but always
check the user's editing history first, to ascertain which one would be
appropriate. Then, if they are continuing to edit a month later, I try to
followup with another, more personal message, mention something they've
been working on or assist with any warnings or whatever, then let them know
if they have questions or need help, I'm always hanging around. If I'm able
to determine a specific focus or interest where their participation in a
WikiProject would be beneficial, I also provide a direct invitation.

Even when an editor possibly writes an autobiography and it gets deleted,
I'll say something like, "Hey, I'm sorry to hear that you're article was
deleted. I realize this must be frustrating for you. Please don't be
discouraged. I noticed that you're a (photographer, doctor, author, etc.)
were you aware that we have a team of editors that share your same
interests and work together to develop, write, and improve articles on
photography? You can find more information about the "WikiProject" here.
(provide link) More often than not, this small effort tends to turn a
discouraged new editor into one that is empowered to work to improve the
encyclopedia in areas in which he has a professional background and
knowledge. This is just one way I work to try to retain new editors. It's
actually worked very well.

Cindy



On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Nathan  wrote:

> Let's separate the two elements of a "welcome message" - one is an actual
> welcome, a personal exchange that should be provided by a human being. The
> other is the provision of useful information, links to policies and
> guidelines and the sort of "how-to" information that anyone should have
> easy access to.
>
> I think it makes very good sense to automatically and always provide an
> easy-access guide to Wikipedia for new editors - especially if the
> registration process redirects on completion to their talkpage, rather than
> to a placeholder page. And, fwiw, I have been reading messages to this list
> for the last 5 years.
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Cindy Ashley-Nelson
"Yes. *Her again.*"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Nathan
Let's separate the two elements of a "welcome message" - one is an actual
welcome, a personal exchange that should be provided by a human being. The
other is the provision of useful information, links to policies and
guidelines and the sort of "how-to" information that anyone should have
easy access to.

I think it makes very good sense to automatically and always provide an
easy-access guide to Wikipedia for new editors - especially if the
registration process redirects on completion to their talkpage, rather than
to a placeholder page. And, fwiw, I have been reading messages to this list
for the last 5 years.
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Cynthia Ashley-Nelson
I've read the responses over the past 24 hours and have followed the
suggestions made by Pine. I appreciate her proactive manner with addressing
issues and lack that she sees. While some may not agree with the automatic
welcome template idea, at least she's actively working toward and
presenting solutions to problems that she identifies. I don't personally
agree with using or implementing automatic welcome templates, but she
certainly doesn't deserve the harshness offered in response to her
suggestion.

Instead of shooting her down, maybe we can use this as a brainstorming tool
to generate a better solution? Any constructive ideas?

Cindy

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 4:18 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 22 March 2012 10:56, En Pine  wrote:
>
> > Why would you not want to provide people guidance before they've made
> their first edit, and why not provide them some encouragement to edit in a
> welcome message?
>
>
> Because in practice, new editors don't read them - they think the
> messages are just boilerplate for tl;dr.
>
> I urge you again to bother reading what's been posted to this list
> over the past 24 hours.
>
>
> - d.
>
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-- 

Best regards,

Cindy Ashley-Nelson
"Yes. *Her again.*"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread David Gerard
On 22 March 2012 10:56, En Pine  wrote:

> Why would you not want to provide people guidance before they've made their 
> first edit, and why not provide them some encouragement to edit in a welcome 
> message?


Because in practice, new editors don't read them - they think the
messages are just boilerplate for tl;dr.

I urge you again to bother reading what's been posted to this list
over the past 24 hours.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread En Pine

>> On 03/22/12 1:37 AM, En Pine wrote:
>> First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message to 
>> the user’s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but also for 
>> Commons, Simple, and other projects? Currently we require a human to do 
>> this, which means that lots of people seem not to get welcome messages which 
>> could contain useful information, and perhaps a link to the Teahouse for EN 
>> users. Could we implement an automated post to a user’s talk page that gives 
>> the user links to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or other similar 
>> resources as soon as the user has registered?
>>
> This is a terrible idea, on a par with automated telephone messages 
> which ask you to make selections by number.
>
> The other point is that many new registrants never edit at all, or they 
> may be vandals or spammers.  Let them make their intentions clear before 
> welcoming them.  The welcome should show that we are aware of exactly 
> what they have done, and thank them for doing so even if it's only a 
> simple spelling correction.
>
> Ray

Why would you not want to provide people guidance before they've made their 
first edit, and why not provide them some encouragement to edit in a welcome 
message?

I think the idea that automated telephone messages are going to stop is 
unrealistic, just as the idea that every new user will be personally welcomed 
with a customized message is unrealistic. It seems to me that we should take 
advantage of technology where it's useful.

Pine
  
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread David Gerard
On 22 March 2012 10:47, En Pine  wrote:

> Your tone comes across as harsh.


I believe this is actually an objection to the content of my post
rather than its formatting.


> Do you have any positive suggestions about how to improve editor retention?


This is evidence you haven't been reading comments on this list in
just the last 24 hours.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread En Pine

> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:41:18 +
> From: David Gerard 
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>   
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On 22 March 2012 08:37, En Pine  wrote:
> 
> > First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message to 
> > the user?s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but also for 
> > Commons, Simple, and other projects?
> 
> 
> Is there any evidence anyone reads the template and doesn't just treat
> it as bot-generated tl;dr?
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
> 
> 

I certainly read the welcome message that someone gave me when I was new. 

Your tone comes across as harsh. Do you have any positive suggestions about how 
to improve editor retention? 

Pine
  
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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Tim Starling
On 22/03/12 19:37, En Pine wrote:
> I have two suggestions about templates. I don’t know if Steven’s
> the right person to ask about these particular ideas so I’m sending
> this email to him and CCing it to Foundation-l.
> 
> First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome
> message to the user’s talk page when they first register, not only
> for EN but also for Commons, Simple, and other projects? Currently
> we require a human to do this, which means that lots of people seem
> not to get welcome messages which could contain useful information,
> and perhaps a link to the Teahouse for EN users. Could we implement
> an automated post to a user’s talk page that gives the user links
> to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or other similar
> resources as soon as the user has registered?
> 
> Second, has anyone looked at non-English Wikipedias, especially any
> that show better editor retention than EN’s, to check for best
> practices regarding the languages used on templates?

There's an extension called NewUserMessage that does this. It's
enabled on 22 Wikimedia wikis, including Commons. It can be enabled on
en.wikipedia.org also if there's enough support for it.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Fae
It's been discussed on-wiki before and firmly rejected (too lazy to
dig it out). There's no way around needing a human pair of eyes to
look at what a new user is up to and judge how best to welcome them to
Wikipedia editing or advise them on problematic contributions.

Twinkle has a well thought out set of standard welcome templates built
in and if someone wanted to create a better intelligent welcomer user
script, I have some highly successful code at
 [under "function
myWelcome(mytype)"].

Fae

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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread Ray Saintonge

On 03/22/12 1:37 AM, En Pine wrote:

First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message to the 
user’s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but also for 
Commons, Simple, and other projects? Currently we require a human to do this, 
which means that lots of people seem not to get welcome messages which could 
contain useful information, and perhaps a link to the Teahouse for EN users. 
Could we implement an automated post to a user’s talk page that gives the user 
links to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or other similar resources as 
soon as the user has registered?

This is a terrible idea, on a par with automated telephone messages 
which ask you to make selections by number.


The other point is that many new registrants never edit at all, or they 
may be vandals or spammers.  Let them make their intentions clear before 
welcoming them.  The welcome should show that we are aware of exactly 
what they have done, and thank them for doing so even if it's only a 
simple spelling correction.


Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates

2012-03-22 Thread David Gerard
On 22 March 2012 08:37, En Pine  wrote:

> First, has anyone thought about automatically adding a welcome message to the 
> user’s talk page when they first register, not only for EN but also for 
> Commons, Simple, and other projects?


Is there any evidence anyone reads the template and doesn't just treat
it as bot-generated tl;dr?


- d.

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