[WikiEN-l] How to square being welcome with keeping up quality

[Gallagher Mark George]

G'day David Gerard,

> On 17/05/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Similarly, for good faith pages of newbie autobio, I sometimes 
> modify> the template, or write a message instead, and so do quite 
> a number of
> > other people.  (after deleting the article, of course). The 
> wording of
> > many of the templates is quite friendly, but the effect can 
> still be
> > off-putting.
> 
> I really hate the templates. Rubber-stamp welcomes aren't welcomes,
> they're bureaucratic processing. This is newbie-biting in itself, and
> we should be unsurprised that people then regard Wikipedia as a
> nightmare of red tape and playing process.

I wrote my own rubber-stamp welcomes, which I think is more friendly:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MarkGallagher/welcome>
and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MarkGallagher/welcome-aussie>

And conversational enough that it doesn't read like a welcome.

The most important thing, though, is that if the wording in one of those templates is inappropriate, I won't use them; I'll write a personal message.

The same goes with {{testN}} and equivalents.  I never use {{testN}} anyway, but those who do should be aware that many (most?) situations in vandalism-cleanup are not helped by the use of those templates, and be prepared to write a personal message when appropriate.  Of course, when you're cruising around with AntiVandalBot or whatever, it's easy to stuff up in your enthusiasm.


-- 
[[User:MarkGallagher]]