[Foundation-l] Comparison of new user welcome efforts across projects

[Robert Scott Horning]

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