Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On 22 March 2012 08:37, En Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com 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. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:41:18 + From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates Message-ID: CAJ0tu1G_oGoEqB84B6BzO1Okd6k4LPoC8R6NB4H+TWX-=ps...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 On 22 March 2012 08:37, En Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On 22 March 2012 10:47, En Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com 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. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On 22 March 2012 10:56, En Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com 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. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 22 March 2012 10:56, En Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com 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. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Best regards, Cindy Ashley-Nelson Yes. *Her again.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 nawr...@gmail.com 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. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Best regards, Cindy Ashley-Nelson Yes. *Her again.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
These are both great questions Pine. On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:37 AM, En Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:02, Fae fae...@gmail.com 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Send foundation-l mailing list submissions to foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at foundation-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of foundation-l digest... 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 sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 willtakato...@gmail.comwrote: 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Best regards, Cindy Ashley-Nelson Yes. *Her again.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On Mar 22, 2012 8:46 PM, Cynthia Ashley-Nelson cindam...@gmail.com 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 willtakato...@gmail.com 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Best regards, Cindy Ashley-Nelson Yes. *Her again.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On 3/22/2012 9:00 PM, Steven Walling wrote: On Mar 22, 2012 8:46 PM, Cynthia Ashley-Nelsoncindam...@gmail.com 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote: 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 steven.wall...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Best regards, Cindy Ashley-Nelson Yes. *Her again.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
