Brianna Laugher wrote:
Hello,
Welcoming new users is a common community activity across many
Wikimedia wikis. The idea is usually to do at least some of the
following: give the user key links to core policies, an explanation of
syntax/technical help, make them feel part of the community, and give
them links to places to ask further questions.
Different projects can have different needs. For example, some
non-English projects give links (in English) to Embassy or Babel
pages, where they can ask questions in English rather than the
language of the project. Also, non-Wikipedia projects can perhaps
expect that most of their new users will be familiar with Wikipedia
first, and therefore tailor their welcome messages with the
expectation that the user already is familiar with the technical
aspects, and emphasise the difference in policies between their
project and Wikipedia.
cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
There may have been a time when this was true for Wikibooks, but
increasingly I am finding individuals (at least on en.wikibooks) who are
coming into content development on Wikibooks first that have never been
involved with Wikipedia at all on any level. One of the huge reasons
for this is some minor publicity that is happening in regards to
Wikibooks among educators and the broader educational community, and
because it is growing to become a substantial project in its own right.
There have been recently several articles in magazines written for
educators who mention Wikibooks as an educational resource, and
Wikipedia is mentioned only as a footnote.
The user community on Wikibooks is growing in ways that even surprise
and astonish me from time to time.
BTW, just to plug something from Wikibooks, there is a Wikibook that you
might want to get involved with that has been addressing some of these
issues of project management from the viewpoint of a "sysop" on
Wikimedia projects:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Wikimedia_Administrator%27s_Handbook
This is essentially a new administrator's guide that we (the other
Wikibooks admins and I) have put together primarily for our own internal
training of new administrators, but we have written it with the
intention that it would be generally of use for other Wikimedia projects
and for other users of the MediaWiki software. Some of your suggestions
that you have made here in this e-mail post I would like, with your
permission, to add to this handbook.
--
Robert Scott Horning