I have seen good results with the "thank" feature. It is easy to use and seems
appreciated. When thanked users write to me in response, I have noticed that a specific
and neutral "I read your edits about xyz and appreciate them" seems to be more
likely to encourage more edits about xyz rather than a suggestion to do something else
about xyz (such as joining a wiki project)
Sent from my iPad
On Aug 26, 2014, at 4:59 AM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 26 August 2014 02:09, David Goodman
<dggenwp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Perhaps the best way of doing this is the
admittedly laborious method of
personally communicating with new editors who seem promising and
encouraging them and offering to help them continue. The key word in this
is "personally". It cannot be effectively done with wikilove messages ,
and certainly not with anything that looks like a template. Template
welcomes are essentially in the same class as mail or web
"personalized"advertisements. What works is to show that you actually read
and appreciated what they are doing, to the extent you wanted to write
something specific.
I believe there is a software-facilitated way of doing this. You are quite
right that the most effective way of retaining new editors who have good
potential is for them to have some personalised contact and a sense of
community, but you are right that it is time-consuming and it is also
difficult to identify people who are a) new, b) have potential and c) are
people that you personally are interested in helping.
IMO the most likely way to help identify those people is to leverage the
power of the WikiProjects (e.g. Birds, Military History, France,
Mathematics...) to bring new users closer to communities-of-interest
quickly. Erik Moller has spoken about this at Wikimania both this year and
also a couple of years ago and I completely agree with him.
Perhaps when a new user registers they can be asked to name a few things
they're interested in (perhaps prompted from a list). This automagically
connects them to the relevant Wikiproject and somehow tells the members of
that wikiproject that a new user has just registered and expressed an
interest in their topic. Proactive WikiProjects might set up some form of
mentoring scheme, or welcoming committee, or 'tasks that newbies can do'
list. It would be up to the WikiProject to work out the best ways to
coordinate their work with newbies. Rather like the beginning of the
academic year at a university - all the student clubs set up tables to
compete to recruit new members :-)
Yes - this requires software development and therefore needs to be put on a
roadmap, budgeted for etc. etc. But, if we're talking about
editor-retention and *personalised support, *I think it's high time that
the WikiProjects receive some developer attention - in recognition of the
fantastic work that they do in both coordinating the creation of good
quality content and also in building a sense of community among editors
(old and new).
-Liam / Wittylama
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