One problem with the assertion that "manual welcomes are better than
automated welcomes" is that it fails to parse the elements of a welcome
message. A personal message is obviously more meaningful as a method of
welcoming per se than an automated one; but all welcome messages contain
more than just "Hey, welcome to Wikipedia!" There is no argument that I've
seen that effectively makes the case that this information should be
withheld, or that it is better received when delivered personally than when
delivered automatically. The assertion also fails on simple math; while
5,000 personal welcomes might be better than 5,000 automated ones, 5,000
personal welcomes may not be better than 5,000 personal welcomes plus 5
million automated welcomes.
Further, can you explain to me the "good case for not doing an auto-welcome
until someone has a history of good-faith edits"? Surely the object of the
useful information contained in the welcome is to help a user make better
edits? It seems like there is little downside in automatically providing
registered users with useful information; a spammer will ignore it, but
make no nefarious use of it, while a good faith user (or someone with the
potential of becoming a good-faith user) might just find it highly useful.
Unless there is some argument based on server load or something, I really
don't see why new account-holders shouldn't receive the useful info of a
welcome message at registration. That information can be seen as a positive
intervention - and with such an intervention, the sooner the better, so why
wait until after they've managed 10 or 50 or 100 edits?
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 6:32 PM, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Making sure that all goodfaith newbies get welcomed is
a great idea, but at
registration is not the right time. One of the consequences of Single User
Login is that an active editor who starts clicking interwiki links will
quickly they find themselves registered on shedloads of wikis, even if they
haven't got the fonts installed to see the scripts on that wiki and were
just clicking to see if another language used the same photo or maybe had a
reference they could click. Combined with our steadily increasing
proportion of spammers and the large increase in our proportion of vandals
since 2005, there is a good case for not doing an auto welcome until
someone has done some goodfaith edits.
Another good argument that has come up on EN wiki is that manual welcomes
are probably better than blanket templated ones. I think it would be worth
testing this, we know that welcomed users are more likely to keep editing
than unwelcomed ones. But we don't currently know that a targeted welcome
is more effective than a bot one. My expectation is that if we tested this
we would find that a welcome from someone who has just interacted with you,
such as by categorising or wikifying the article you've just started, is a
more positive welcome than from someone who has tempated or even deletion
tagged your contributions. Of course newbies are unlikely to be aware that
many welcomes come from editors who have marked their new article as
patrolled or checked their edit and noticed that t wasn't vandalism.
One way to combine automated welcomes with manual ones would be to use
automation as a backstop. This could be done with an automated welcome
which only went to editors who met all the following criteria:
1. Editor has done more than 10 edits
2. Editor has edited today
3. Editor first edited more than 7 days ago
4. Editor is not currently blocked
5. Editor has not previously been welcomed
6. Editor's userpage does not have one of the templates declaring them
to be an alternate account
7. Editor is not flagged as a bot
WereSpielChequers
On 22 March 2012 12:00, <foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Send foundation-l mailing list submissions to
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
foundation-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of foundation-l digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: User talk templates (Ray Saintonge)
2. Re: User talk templates (Fae)
3. Re: User talk templates (Tim Starling)
4. Re: User talk templates (En Pine)
5. Re: User talk templates (David Gerard)
6. Re: User talk templates (En Pine)
7. Re: User talk templates (David Gerard)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:53:47 -0700
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
Message-ID: <4F6AF6AB.30106(a)telus.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
On 03/22/12 1:37 AM, En Pine wrote:
First, has anyone thought about automatically
adding a welcome message
to the user?s talk page when they first register, not only
for EN but
also
for Commons, Simple, and other projects?
Currently we require a human to
do
this, which means that lots of people seem not to
get welcome messages
which could contain useful information, and perhaps a link to the
Teahouse
for EN users. Could we implement an automated
post to a user?s talk page
that gives the user links to WP:WELCOME, WP:HELP, the Teahouse, and/or
other similar resources as soon as the user has registered?
This is a terrible idea, on a par with
automated telephone messages
which ask you to make selections by number.
The other point is that many new registrants never edit at all, or they
may be vandals or spammers. Let them make their intentions clear before
welcoming them. The welcome should show that we are aware of exactly
what they have done, and thank them for doing so even if it's only a
simple spelling correction.
Ray
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l