G'day David Gerard,
On 17/05/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Similarly, for good faith pages of newbie autobio, I sometimes
modify> the template, or write a message instead, and so do quite a number of
other people. (after deleting the article, of course). The
wording of
many of the templates is quite friendly, but the effect can
still be
off-putting.
I really hate the templates. Rubber-stamp welcomes aren't welcomes, they're bureaucratic processing. This is newbie-biting in itself, and we should be unsurprised that people then regard Wikipedia as a nightmare of red tape and playing process.
I wrote my own rubber-stamp welcomes, which I think is more friendly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MarkGallagher/welcome and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MarkGallagher/welcome-aussie
And conversational enough that it doesn't read like a welcome.
The most important thing, though, is that if the wording in one of those templates is inappropriate, I won't use them; I'll write a personal message.
The same goes with {{testN}} and equivalents. I never use {{testN}} anyway, but those who do should be aware that many (most?) situations in vandalism-cleanup are not helped by the use of those templates, and be prepared to write a personal message when appropriate. Of course, when you're cruising around with AntiVandalBot or whatever, it's easy to stuff up in your enthusiasm.