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.
Personalising the sign-up process is often not a priority for projects, because only admins can edit MediaWiki pages, it is not easy to locate which page should be changed to update which message, and it tends to have been a long time since admins signed up/were new, so they forget if it was a bad experience or what it was like.
I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give feedback on the message, which you can read here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log
There was some concern people wouldn't like the impersonal method of being welcomed by a bot, but one person even commented that it made them feel part of the community! Some people said they would like to appear automatically on the talk page without them even making edits).
The Commons welcome message is quite dense, but the links are useful enough that an 'oldbie' could still find it very handy to keep around. It has an emphasis on image-management-specific tools such as user's Gallery, Commons Helper (transferring images from Wikipedia etc) and how to get your own mistakes deleted. It also has 33 translations, which is pretty fantastic.
Anyway, via this feedback, I recently became aware of Hungarian Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Welcomecreation (this is the message that says 'you have successfully registered your account' -- your first contact with the new user, in effect). See their changes: http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AWelcomecreation&di...
I thought it was quite fantastic, and updated Commons' Welcomecreation message in a similar fashion.
I also started looking at the MediaWiki:Welcomecreation and Template:Welcome (or equiv.) messages for other wikis. You can see my summry here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/welcome (and you can complete some more if you feel like it, especially mention if your project has a 'welcoming committee' equivalent)
It is quite interesting what different projects choose to emphasise. ZH.wp, wikt (Chinese) explicitly highlight the GFDL. IT.wp has a red warning against violating copyrights. PL.wp, wikt (Polish) both have explicit links to IRC channels, so I guess it is an important tool for them. JA.wp (Japanese) doesn't appear to have a template:Welcome (at least it is not interwiki linked on the English one...surely they have one???).
So this is just a bit of a message, to admins of various projects who care about the impression that new users get, to have a look at these pages on your project and see how they compare.
Here are my 'best ofs' so far:
MediaWiki:Welcomecreation: FR.wp: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation HU.wp: http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
Template:Welcome (or equiv.): PL.wp: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szablon:Witaj2 nice screenshots to explain things EN.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:pediawelcome A little combative, but does well to emphasise the differences between wp and wikt NL.wp: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Welkom Nice sidebar with links to explanations of Wikipedia jargon (remember the jargon, people???!) ES.wp: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Bienvenido_usuario Visually, the most impressive one. ZH.wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:%E6%AC%A2%E8%BF%8E Pretty and minimalist (possibly too minimalist, and thus easy to ignore, though).
What are the hallmarks of bad welcome messages? (in my opinion--) Too much dense text. Too much information. (Do they need to know how many articles there are or when the project was founded? No.) Too many links. (Consider: is it really vital that the user go read the article on 'Wikipedia'? Probably not, so probably don't link it.) Irrelevant links. (EN.wp links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_development as 'How to write a great article'. It's actually part of a series called 'The path to a Featured Article'. Rather ambitious for a n00b who you simultaneously presume doesn't even know how to sign their posts on talk pages. Do all new users need a guide on inserting images into articles? FR.wp thinks so, but I doubt it.)
What are the most common newbie errors you see people making? Remember back, what was the frustrating gem that you spent hours searching to find and wished someone had told you earlier? Are your users coming from Wikipedia -- are you wasting precious screen real estate telling them things they already know? Consider writing messages that cater to separate audiences if appropriate.
Anyway that's all, I hope some people feel inspired to update their welcome messages, and if you know of a project that has a particularly nice welcome message I'd love to see it.
cheers, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
Thanks for bringing that up to our attention, it is indeed a forgotten place!. also thanks for that table, it should help. but as you said, simple welcoming message is essential concentrating on the most important aspects. and yes, yours are designed specifically for commons place as it seems. especially the 'how to' change language. another thing, you should include a semi-protected template in MediaWiki:Welcomecreation page. as I have seen, a lot of registered users can be creative and yields great results.
Mohamed Magdy
On 04/02/07, Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for bringing that up to our attention, it is indeed a forgotten place!. also thanks for that table, it should help. but as you said, simple welcoming message is essential concentrating on the most important aspects. and yes, yours are designed specifically for commons place as it seems. especially the 'how to' change language. another thing, you should include a semi-protected template in MediaWiki:Welcomecreation page. as I have seen, a lot of registered users can be creative and yields great results.
Interesting idea. I think I will do that, it should make translations easier. Do you work in a project that does that a lot? Although for this message in particular, I guess most registered users still won't care much about it, since they only see it once. :)
cheers Brianna
Brianna Laugher wrote: <snip>
I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give feedback on the message, which you can read here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log
<snip>
Maybe it could be a feature in MediaWiki. I am not sure we want to create a dummy page each time a user create an account through.
Just a thought:
I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and can understand several other languages although not well enough to write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's noticeboard, etc).
Not something we can solve at a "software" level, but at a "community" level.
RB
Roberto Alfonso schreef:
Just a thought:
I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and can understand several other languages although not well enough to write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's noticeboard, etc).
Not something we can solve at a "software" level, but at a "community" level.
RB
Hoi, There are at least 117 users called GerardM on the Wiktionaries alone. The first important function for me is to find where the preferences are and change the language of the user interface so that I am at least able to navigate the wiki. This is the very minimum that should function for all languages. Sadly it does not. This is however very much something that with some organisation can be solved.
When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is at the moment.
Thanks, GerardM
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is at the moment.
You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a Wikinotpedia welcome.
cheers, Brianna
Brianna Laugher schreef:
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is at the moment.
You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a Wikinotpedia welcome.
cheers, Brianna
Hoi, You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result. It is all very good that you want to point out why and where all the different notice boards are but this too is something where you need localisation to be effective at it. Remember there are some 250 languages that we aim to support. Effectively that is the size of what you want to do.
When you make it more interesting by wanting to consider WikiNotPedia, consider what to do for WikiNotMedia. You want some structure to the messages because Wikipedia and Commons are at the moment the only projects where you have communities for 250 languages.
Thanks, GerardM
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Brianna Laugher schreef:
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is at the moment.
You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a Wikinotpedia welcome.
cheers, Brianna
Hoi, You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result.
What do you mean by this, "a language not supported"? I am only concerned with existing Wikimedia projects.
or is your point that I only wrote my email in English? I don't apologise for that...
I am not really clear about what your point is or was. Is it a criticism of me? Or the current Wikimedia community? or something else?
regards, Brianna
Brianna Laugher schreef:
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Brianna Laugher schreef:
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is at the moment.
You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a Wikinotpedia welcome.
cheers, Brianna
Hoi, You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result.
What do you mean by this, "a language not supported"? I am only concerned with existing Wikimedia projects.
or is your point that I only wrote my email in English? I don't apologise for that...
I am not really clear about what your point is or was. Is it a criticism of me? Or the current Wikimedia community? or something else?
regards, Brianna
Hoi, It is fine that you write in English, no need to apologise. I am also happy with what you aim to do. It is therefore something else.
There are several languages among them Marathi that are not supported while there are projects in Marathi. The Marathi Wikipedia for instance has 7566 articles according to the information on Meta. These languages are not properly supported in MediaWiki because when a new project is created, there is no place where the localisation is maintained. All this maintenance is done in a haphazard way and you have to be aware off and able to use the tools of the developers to do something about it.
Nikerabbit hosts a project called "BetaWiki" and this is where a lot of localisation work was done for many languages. Special software was written to manage this, it has been made a MediaWiki extension. We are waiting for Brion to give it priority and accept it. Gangleri was the man who did a lot of the work on the BetaWiki and he was absolutely invaluable, while he was active he was one of the most relevant people in the Wikimedia Foundation for the work that he did. At this moment in time, we want to move the functionality of the "BetaWiki" and include this in the Incubator. The policy of the language committee for new languages is that without content in the Incubator there will be no new project. This means that when people change the messages for a new language they will immediately benefit; instant gratification.
The importance of this is that all messages can be maintained in the Incubator and all projects will benefit when messages are maintained there. The messages that are specific to one specific wiki will still be maintained locally. These are very much the messages that you are talking about. However, you cannot inform at this moment in time the Marathi speaking people because no project supports Marathi except the Marathi projects and each Marathi project has to maintain the messages again and again. This is a major issue when starting up new projects. It is a painful issue because it can be resolved. It is painful because localisation effectively has no priority.
Thanks, GerardM
On 04/02/07, Roberto Alfonso rpgrca@gmail.com wrote:
Just a thought:
I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and can understand several other languages although not well enough to write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's noticeboard, etc).
Yes. I think it would be a safe assumption that a person registering an account, that doesn't speak the language of the project, MUST be a Wikimedian doing routine things like interwiki.
For example FR.wp links from template:welcome to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bistro_des_non-francophones/en You can see on this page that they more or less assume the user is familiar with Wikipedia. I think that is smart. Compare to HU.wp's "welcome for non-speakers" - http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sablon:Welcome . IMO this should be redone. If the user doesn't know enough Hungarian to comprehend a welcome message, what is the point of giving them Village pump links?
Here is something that RTL wikis should take note of: non-speakers would LOVE a link that gives some tips for editing in a RTL environment. it can be really, really scary!
OK for Wikipedia, maybe we can create a universal "non-speaker's welcome". It should be something like...
============= Welcome to the X Wikipedia, Y! * Put [[Wikipedia:Babel|]] boxes on your user page so others know how well you can speak language X. You can put an interwiki link to your English Wikipedia userpage by writing [[en:User:Y]]. * If you are updating interwiki links, please note that we conventionally put the links [at the start|at the end] of the article [before|after] the categories. You can put "updating interwiki links" in X language in the edit summary by saying "...". * If you notice vandalism, you can mark a page for speedy deletion by putting {{...}} * You can ask questions in your language at [[...]] or by contacting someone in [[category:user languages]] (equiv.) * A popular translator for X-to-English translation is [...]. Remember that machine translations are only a rough guide :) * Y is a RTL (right to left) language. This page [...] has advice on editing in a RTL environment if you're not used to it. (if relevant) =============
anything that's VITAL that I've missed? I think it should be reasonably easy to gather translations for this and propogate it.
cheers, Brianna
On 04/02/07, Ashar Voultoiz hashar@altern.org wrote:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
<snip> > I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a > bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users > who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give > feedback on the message, which you can read here: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log <snip>
Maybe it could be a feature in MediaWiki. I am not sure we want to create a dummy page each time a user create an account through.
Yeah. We looked at the new user log and there were plenty of accounts that were registered and then never used. Maybe they just wanted to get rid of the site notice. ;) It seemed like a waste to welcome those people who might never return, so we made it after one edit/upload. Although, it only takes one, to make a mistake. :)
cheers Brianna
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.
On 05/02/07, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
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.
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.
That's awesome to hear, and will become more and more common I imagine. Unfortunately most of the press I see still acts as if the only thing WMF does is run English Wikipedia, grooh. I also noticed as I have been continuing down the list that quite a few languages have wikt appear above wp. My list was ordered by # of pages, so this is perhaps not entirely surprising, since writing a word definition is rather less daunting than writing an encyclopedia entry, but it still surprises me given Wikipedia's head-start in time, and Wiktionary's relatively low profile. I suspect Wiktionary's rather excellent adaption of Special:Search, with pre-formatted templates for many word types, has helped lots of people quickly add entries, which is great.
Anyway... I still feel it is probably useful to highlight the differences between Wikipedia and Wikinotpedia. Two columns can be used:
1. Brand new to wiki editing? Howto, Help, Be bold, sign talk pages, NPOV, copyright/license. 2. Familiar with a Wikimedia or MediaWiki wiki? Prominent link to a project page contrasting other Wikimedia projects with this one, link to Village pump equivalent.
If I am a Wikipedia user I am going to be arrogant :) and assume this new project works the same way. And if you give me a message telling me to sign my talk pages posts, I'm going to figure I've seen it all before. If I am not a Wikipedia user, then please don't tell me about the differences between them just yet! That's what I figure.
While looking at all these welcome templates, I have been thinking about the EN.wp one which I have never much liked. At the moment, if I could overhaul its content, I would remove all references to the Manual of Style and FAs and 'Community', and just put a humungous link to a list of WikiProjects and invite the newbie to join one they are interested in. There is just so many of these things. They offer an instant advice network, shared interests, and topic-specific MOS-type info; model articles. I like the welcome templates that give users a link to wanted topics. I imagine a lot of users join with one specific goal in mind (to write an entry on their favourite sports star, for example). After that, what next? I think WikiProjects could be a great way to hook people in. There's over 200 WikiProjects at EN.wp, and that's just the active ones! (!) I wonder how widespread they are at other Wikipedias? Are there similar topic-grouped task forces at other projects?
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
Such a book, or rather books, are sorely needed. That one looks like at least 3 books: How to set up a MediaWiki wiki (the social/community management side rather than technical, which has decent coverage now); How to start up a new Wikimedia wiki; Info about these existing Wikimedia wikis.
The latter seems like the one that is going to be out of date most quickly. I am interested mostly in the second, I guess: what guidance can we give to new Wikimedia projects to help them survive? MediaWiki is set up by default to serve a medium-sized wiki rather than a small one, so when you start a new one, you spend a lot of time fixing redlinks that appear in system messages to pages like [[project:administrators]] and [[project:protected pages]]. And you are given a sidebar with a good half-dozen links that seem to need filling out, even though currently the discussion of your entire wiki could all take place on [[talk:main page]] for a good six months.
this is a general comment - keeping the meta information on your wiki at an appropriate level is a constant process of review, that should probably be formally reviewed every 6 months or so. By formally reviewed, I mean an admin logs out of their account, signs up for a new one, gets their grandpa's grandpa to sign up for an account, and tries to see with new eyes, what info is overwhelming and unnecessary (at that stage), and what needed info is missing. When you start, you don't even need welcome messages, because maybe all the people who join are people you personally invited anyway. Then for a while you write some users manual advice, when they seem to get a big muddled. Then you notice you are giving more and more users the same advice, so maybe you make a template. Then it becomes part of the community: the expectation that all newbies should be welcomed, and looked after in this superficial way. Then it becomes bureaucracy: the templates become overloaded with "essential" info, they divide and multiply in versions, and... I'm not sure what next.
At the same time, your community is growing. when you first started, you didn't even have any formalised policies, because everything was understood. then you formalise a couple. and a couple more. You start with one discussion page for everything. It splinters into help desk, tech help, ref desk, policy proposals, email list, irc, admin attention board, you name it, it can have its own page. But the new user didn't do all that growing with your community, and chances are they don't really need to know about them all yet. You have to re-evaluate your welcome message to figure out which type of help you actually wanted to offer.
My point is that it's very likely NOT appropriate to foist a welcome message with the same level of complexity on every community equally. In a way, the luxury of having people worry about this 'meta' kind of information only comes with wikis who have 'enough' content-adding editors. when you're at the stage where basically anything you type in can come up a redlink, the opportunity to be the first to create those basic articles is far much more tempting than figuring out how to tweak the interface to be friendly to newbies. (Bah, you figured it out, they will too!)
[these are just general musings not directed at Robert or Wikibooks or anyone else in particular]
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.
For sure, of course! And please do have a look at some of the nice designs I have highlighted at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/welcome :)
cheers, Brianna
Brianna - this is a fabulous comparison you've been compiling, and a good discussion to boot. Thank you for focusing on it.
On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Brianna Laugher wrote:
On 05/02/07, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
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
That's awesome to hear, and will become more and more common I imagine.
Ditto; that's wonderful, and hopefully true for Wiktionary as well.
- Brand new to wiki editing?
Howto, Help, Be bold, sign talk pages, NPOV, copyright/license. 2. Familiar with a Wikimedia or MediaWiki wiki? Prominent link to a project page contrasting other Wikimedia projects with this one, link to Village pump equivalent.
Yes.
about the EN.wp one which I have never much liked. At the moment, if I could overhaul its content, I would remove all references to the Manual of Style and FAs and 'Community', and just put a humungous link to a list of WikiProjects and invite the newbie to join one they are interested in. There is just so many of these things. They offer an
I like that; add links to a few portals and to Village Pumps as well, since there too you can get instant feedback and advice. And the early user experience is very different if one is introduced immediately to AfD and Deletion Review than if one is not; I don't know which is preferable.
MediaWiki is set up by default to serve a medium-sized wiki rather than a small one, so when you start a new one, you spend a lot of time fixing redlinks that appear in system messages to pages like [[project:administrators]] and [[project:protected pages]]. And you are given a sidebar with a good half-dozen links that seem to need filling out, even though currently the discussion of your entire wiki could all take place on [[talk:main page]] for a good six months.
This is a really good point. An effort to change the MWiki defaults so that it starts out set up for a small project would be helpful for 95% of wiki users. Then you could toggle a site-wide size setting that will step you through ways to update it to scale with a medium- and large-sized project [more sidebar links, more and different specialized messages, more organizational pages (a policy overview, a community overview, &c), more optimization for handling load, storing images, specific options for coping with spam].
When you start, you don't even need welcome messages, because maybe all the people who join are people you personally invited anyway.
But you do need them very soon.
Then it becomes part of the community: the expectation that all newbies should be welcomed, and looked after in this superficial way.
This is the cheerful stage of wiki growth.
Then it becomes bureaucracy: the templates become overloaded with "essential" info, they divide and multiply in versions, and... I'm not sure what next.
When they start warning you, and edit pages lead off with all the things you SHOULD NOT do... and people feel that scaring newbies away is good because who needs all these contributors anyway if they're not going to fight vandals? This is the defensive stage of wiki growth.
For sure, of course! And please do have a look at some of the nice designs I have highlighted at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/welcome :)
Which everyone should look at, on general principle. Perhaps we need a welcome message or wikibirthday notice for old-timers, which gets them to look at pages like this one.
"Happy Second Anniversary as a wiki editor! Please check out a) the following new policies 1) these meta-comparisons b) the following community pages 2) these cross-project efforts ... ... "
SJ
On 05/02/07, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Brianna Laugher wrote:
Then it becomes bureaucracy: the templates become overloaded with "essential" info, they divide and multiply in versions, and... I'm not sure what next.
When they start warning you, and edit pages lead off with all the things you SHOULD NOT do... and people feel that scaring newbies away is good because who needs all these contributors anyway if they're not going to fight vandals? This is the defensive stage of wiki growth.
Mm. I think if I was starting up a wiki now, I'd avoid using the term 'vandal' or 'vandalism' at all.I see a lot of edit summaries that are like 'rv vandal' or '{{speedydelete|vandal}}' when it's really only experimenting with the wiki software as it was designed to be experimented with. 'Vandal' should suggest a malicious intent towards the wiki community. 'Test' edits are not malicious. Page blanking is probably not malicious.
I guess since English Wikipedia has always led the way in terms of user growth and sheer size, it is up to other projects to choose if they consider that a good path to follow, and let it continue, or try to intervene to avoid some of the conclusions that EN.wp has reached. Reactions from users at DE.wp, FR.wp, JA.wp, PL.wp would be interesting in this regard.
BTW, on the topic of research: there is a lot that could be done with existing projects, tracking new projects from creation onwards, basically seeing which project namespace pages they choose to create in what order, and who they choose to model themselves on (the majority of welcome messages I have seen so far have been modelled on EN.wp or FR.wp) It would also be possible to track two same-language projects such as EN.wq against EN.wp. (This would be a lot easier if you had a minority lang speaker to help out as well...)
cheers, Brianna
On 04/02/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
That's awesome to hear, and will become more and more common I imagine. Unfortunately most of the press I see still acts as if the only thing WMF does is run English Wikipedia, grooh.
It's by far our biggest and most popular project, so attracts the attention. But I do try to make a point of mentioning 200 languages and other projects.
Journalists' ears in particular prick up at Commons being a free image repository. "It's not quite Getty Images, but we're working on it. Once the search doesn't suck." I think that describes its potential and problems quite succinctly and accurately ;-)
- d.
On 06/02/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
That's awesome to hear, and will become more and more common I imagine. Unfortunately most of the press I see still acts as if the only thing WMF does is run English Wikipedia, grooh.
It's by far our biggest and most popular project, so attracts the attention. But I do try to make a point of mentioning 200 languages and other projects.
Journalists' ears in particular prick up at Commons being a free image repository. "It's not quite Getty Images, but we're working on it. Once the search doesn't suck." I think that describes its potential and problems quite succinctly and accurately ;-)
Nice one :) or maybe 'It's like Flickr, with less photos of people you don't know, and more useful content. Once the search doesn't suck."
Brianna
We should also look at how anonymous editors are greeted, and the conversion rate of IPs into Users of such greetings.
Regards, Dami [[hu:User:Bdamokos]]
On 2/4/07, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
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
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Bence Damokos wrote:
We should also look at how anonymous editors are greeted, and the conversion rate of IPs into Users of such greetings.
Some Wikidemia-project contributors have long wanted to run such an experiment. You might talk to en:User:Tobacman about running such a study.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tobacman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia (see 'Ongoing Studies' for ideas not yet implemented)
SJ
On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Bence Damokos wrote:
We should also look at how anonymous editors are greeted, and the conversion rate of IPs into Users of such greetings.
Regards, Dami [[hu:User:Bdamokos]]
On 2/4/07, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
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
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hello,
I have moved my comparison into the meta namespace, available from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cross-project_comparisons . On this page I also listed some other comparisons it would be interesting to do, with thanks to Minh (user:Mxn) for some suggestions and information about the Vietnamese Wikipedia and Wiktionary.
cheers Brianna
Of the top 100 projects (according to # of articles[1]), here are some statistics:
*only about 10 have made significant changes to MediaWiki:Welcomecreation, the first page their new registered users will see.
This is a big missed opportunity for projects to impress their standards and methods on their newest user.
*23 either don't welcome new users by template, or if they do, their template doesn't have an interwiki link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcome and I was not able to find the local equivalent. (For non-Wikipedia projects, I checked to see if they had a template with the same name as their Wikipedia equivalent, assuming *it* had a valid interwiki link.) These projects are: EL.wikt, FI.wikt, DE.wikt, HU.wikt, VI.wikt, KU.wikt, BG.wikt, TH.wp, ES.ws, CEB.wp, GL.wikt, ID.wikt, SQ.wp, KO.wikt, BPY.wp, ET.wikt, FA.wikt, SU.wp, WA.wp, SH.wp, SCN.wp, KU.wp, LV.wp.
If you speak one of these languages PLEASE ADD THE INTERWIKI LINK to the English one, or just reply and tell me the name of it! :)
This top 100 covered 4 special wikis (commons, meta, species, nostalgia), 1 wikinews (EN), 1 wikibooks (EN), 1 wikiquote (EN), 5 wikisource (EN, PT, ES, FR, ZH), 26 wiktionaries (...) and 62 wikipedias (...).
If you want to improve these pages for your pet project, I recommend "shopping around" and picking a design you like. Formulating the text is also very important but much harder for one person to judge over 62 languages :)
Best so far (at least, these have elements that I think are worth considering including in your redesign):
MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
* VI.wikt: http://vi.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation * FR.wp: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation * KO.wikt: http://ko.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation * SR.wp: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0%D0%92%D0%B... * ID.wp: http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
Template:Welcome (or equiv.)
* ES.wp: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Bienvenido_usuario * MK.wp: http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD:%D0%94%D0%... * ZH.wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:%E6%AC%A2%E8%BF%8E * NL.wp: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Welkom * PL.wp: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szablon:Witaj2 * EN.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:pediawelcome (as a contrastive message)
cheers, Brianna
[1] In hindsight I should have used the table ordered by number of users rather than pages. Some projects have page numbers falsely boosted by huge bot imports, for example VI.wikt.
Hoi, Check out the number of users on the Persian Wikipedia and compare it with the number of people actually editing.. Any metric is wrong; there is no one size fits all solution. NB On wiktionary there is nothing wrong with using bots to create content. What you do not see is the preparation that went before they actually uploaded things.
It is not nice nor is it correct to talk down on the effort of the Vietnamese Wiktionary crowd.
Thanks, GerardM
On 2/5/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Of the top 100 projects (according to # of articles[1]), here are some statistics:
*only about 10 have made significant changes to MediaWiki:Welcomecreation, the first page their new registered users will see.
This is a big missed opportunity for projects to impress their standards and methods on their newest user.
*23 either don't welcome new users by template, or if they do, their template doesn't have an interwiki link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcome and I was not able to find the local equivalent. (For non-Wikipedia projects, I checked to see if they had a template with the same name as their Wikipedia equivalent, assuming *it* had a valid interwiki link.) These projects are: EL.wikt, FI.wikt, DE.wikt, HU.wikt, VI.wikt, KU.wikt, BG.wikt, TH.wp, ES.ws, CEB.wp, GL.wikt, ID.wikt, SQ.wp, KO.wikt, BPY.wp, ET.wikt, FA.wikt, SU.wp, WA.wp, SH.wp, SCN.wp, KU.wp, LV.wp.
If you speak one of these languages PLEASE ADD THE INTERWIKI LINK to the English one, or just reply and tell me the name of it! :)
This top 100 covered 4 special wikis (commons, meta, species, nostalgia), 1 wikinews (EN), 1 wikibooks (EN), 1 wikiquote (EN), 5 wikisource (EN, PT, ES, FR, ZH), 26 wiktionaries (...) and 62 wikipedias (...).
If you want to improve these pages for your pet project, I recommend "shopping around" and picking a design you like. Formulating the text is also very important but much harder for one person to judge over 62 languages :)
Best so far (at least, these have elements that I think are worth considering including in your redesign):
MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
* VI.wikt: http://vi.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation * FR.wp: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation * KO.wikt: http://ko.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation * SR.wp:http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0%D0%92%D0%B... * ID.wp: http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
Template:Welcome (or equiv.)
* ES.wp: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Bienvenido_usuario * MK.wp:http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD:%D0%94%D0%... * ZH.wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:%E6%AC%A2%E8%BF%8E * NL.wp: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Welkom * PL.wp: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szablon:Witaj2 * EN.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:pediawelcome (as a contrastive message)
cheers, Brianna
[1] In hindsight I should have used the table ordered by number of users rather than pages. Some projects have page numbers falsely boosted by huge bot imports, for example VI.wikt.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 06/02/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
It is not nice nor is it correct to talk down on the effort of the Vietnamese Wiktionary crowd.
Sorry, that was not my intent. I have no opinion on whether it is appropriate for bots to produce large numbers of wiktionary pages because I'm not familiar with Wiktionary. By 'falsely boost' I am referring to the contradiction from what one might expect, that more pages = more users. If WI.wikt had the 11th largest number of registered users, I would be extremely surprised if they had no template:Welcome, and IMO they would be missing a big opportunity by not having this practice of welcoming users with a standard message.
Different messages are appropriate at different stages of wiki growth (as I have said previously). So in my opinion it can be appropriate for a project with relatively low USER growth, like VI.wikt, to not have a template:welcome.
Does it make sense?
regards, Brianna
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, Check out the number of users on the Persian Wikipedia and compare it with the number of people actually editing.. Any metric is wrong; there is no one size fits all solution. NB On wiktionary there is nothing wrong with using bots to create content. What you do not see is the preparation that went before they actually uploaded things.
It is not nice nor is it correct to talk down on the effort of the Vietnamese Wiktionary crowd.
Thanks, GerardM
No offense taken. :) I actually discussed this with Brianna the other day. And the actual importing was done by a French Wiktionarian (Laurent Bouvier) anyways.
Thank you for your research, Brianna Laugher!
On 2/5/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
*23 either don't welcome new users by template, or if they do, their template doesn't have an interwiki link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcome and I was not able to find the local equivalent. (For non-Wikipedia projects, I checked to see if they had a template with the same name as their Wikipedia equivalent, assuming *it* had a valid interwiki link.) These projects are: EL.wikt, FI.wikt, DE.wikt, HU.wikt, VI.wikt, KU.wikt, BG.wikt, TH.wp, ES.ws, CEB.wp, GL.wikt, ID.wikt, SQ.wp, KO.wikt, BPY.wp, ET.wikt, FA.wikt, SU.wp, WA.wp, SH.wp, SCN.wp, KU.wp, LV.wp.
If you speak one of these languages PLEASE ADD THE INTERWIKI LINK to the English one, or just reply and tell me the name of it! :)
For curiosity, why? I am rather afraid it gives wrong information the policies and guidelines of one are unquestionably applied to another. Besides core ethics, they aren't.
Besides that, it could happen a project doesn't rely template to welcome newbies but prefer c&p boilerplates, like Japanese Wikipedia. Is there any wiki page to gather relevant information, Brianna?
On 06/02/07, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
If you speak one of these languages PLEASE ADD THE INTERWIKI LINK to the English one, or just reply and tell me the name of it! :)
For curiosity, why? I am rather afraid it gives wrong information the policies and guidelines of one are unquestionably applied to another. Besides core ethics, they aren't.
Because interwiki links are one of the most reliable ways to make cross-project comparisons? I don't think interwiki link implies they have the same content, only that they perform the same function (think of articles: you can have an interwiki link from a stub to a featured article, right?).
Besides that, it could happen a project doesn't rely template to welcome newbies but prefer c&p boilerplates, like Japanese Wikipedia. Is there any wiki page to gather relevant information, Brianna?
OK, that is information that I can't figure out manually. :) Is there a page with a list of the c&p boilerplates? I will add the info to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cross-project_comparisons/MediaWiki:Welcomecr...
(what about Template:ようこそ ??)
cheers, Brianna
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org