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-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ting Chen
Sent: 30 December 2017 11:38
To: wikimedia-l(a)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" <jeblad(a)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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