What are the good reason to be poaranoid? The only reason I ever heard is "is
making me waste time", usually expressed wasting more time.
BTW, after years of SUL most of the old time users have received a lot of
welcome messages and they receive usually two new ones per year, no more in my
experience. I made some test with newbies and it does not see more different,
when they one open some wikis they might receive a message (and if they are
not used to other culture, that does not happen a lot of time, I suppose) .
I can think of dozens of things in my life that spam me more, and make me more
"paranoid". Yesterday I search a stupid thing and I found a related ad in my
youtube after 5 minutes, I told on a chat app that I had the flue and I got a
flu treatment opening a web page... spent more time being irritated by these
facts, this might have a good impact on everybody's life.
For wikimedia, just ask to add a link to a meta page where is written down
which messages are received via bot simply after log in, so it is super
transparent how it works and you learn how the build up of the SUL log in
works. Put a link to CentralAuth too.
Il Sabato 30 Dicembre 2017 11:28, Peter Southwood
<peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> ha scritto:
Hi Ting, You make a fair point about culture, but the impression I got is that
the welcomes were being sent to people who were not intentionally editing the
arwiki, or aware that they were doing so, which makes this a cultural thing
imposed on people who were not aware of it or expecting it, and who did not
have a way to avoid it even if they had known it might happen, which is a bit
beyond local culture. For myself I am not bothered by messages from other
Wikis, even if I can't read them. I am used to it, but some people are more
paranoid than me, sometimes for good reasons. Cheers,
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Ting Chen
Sent: 30 December 2017 11:38
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki
Hello Amir,
I think what you are questioning is right. And it is necessary to ask such
questions. In my day job it is my duty to ask and discuss such questions with
my customers.
But, with the time I sort of see that these pure utilitarian questions are not
the only questions that we need to consider. I start to ask questions that are
beyond or below (according to the perspective) these pure utilitarian
questions. I find the answer Meno25 gave on Meta a very interesting one in this
respect. In his answer he was not arguing about if the welcome-bot is useful or
meaningful. He said it is their custom to do so. What he is pointing to is
culture. See, why do we hug, shake hands, nod, or rub noses, or kiss? From a
pure utilitarian point of view these behaviors are not only meaningless, they
are even potentially dangerous for our health. If we just want to meet other
people and talk to them why do we not just directly talk about what we want to
talk about and make it behind us?
And this is why in my opinion it is good that every project has its own way to
handle welcome message: Because the welcome message is not only a utilitarian
thing, there is culture beyond or below it. There is culture encompassed from
the societies where the project community is embedded in and there is culture
that was created and developed by the project community.
This is why in my opinion as long as the message is not malicious how every
community handles this is their own thing.
Greetings
Ting
Am 30.12.2017 um 09:29 schrieb Amir E. Aharoni:
> It's a good opportunity to step back and discuss a little something.
>
> The existence of pretty much every bot is a reason to think of a missing
> feature in the site's software. The same goes for templates and gadgets.
>
> Why do many wikis have custom welcome templates and bots that send them?
> The intuitive answer is "to send a personal message to a new user", but if
> it's done by a bot, it's already not personal. What does the bot actually
> automate? The placement of a template? But what is the actual purpose of
> the template?
>
> Is it to say "hello and welcome"? The notifications feature already does it
> nicely.
>
> To send people a list of useful links? I heard many times that new users
> actually do find them useful, and it's a good thing. But it's nevertheless
> an anecdotal claim, and smarter questions should be asked:
> * How many people actually read these messages?
> * Are all the links useful? Do people actually click them?
> * Could some be removed? Could some be added?
> * Why is it different in every project? Could at least some parts be reused
> across languages in a robust and properly localizable manner?
> * Is the talk page really a good place to do this?
> * How useful is it for people for people who come from another language and
> have an account auto-created?
>
> And so on.
>
> Welcome templates have been a part of our sites for well over a decade, but
> it's never too late to ask fundamental question about what purpose do they
> serve, and how could this purpose be served better.
>
> Happy New Year :)
>
> בתאריך 29 בדצמ׳ 2017 11:21, "John Erling Blad" <jeb...@gmail.com> כתב:
>
>> Users on other projects are complaining about the welcome messages at
>> arwiki. A bot at that project are welcoming people that has no activity at
>> that project at all. The bot operator claims the activity is valid, but I
>> can't see that this is a well-behaving bot at all.[1]
>>
>> I suspect the bot is welcoming every user it can find, but using user
>> accounts from central login and not users that has local contributions at
>> arwiki.
>>
>> Can someone shut down the bot until the user fix the spam problem.
>>
>> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Meno25#Welcome_messages
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