[Foundation-l] How should we greet newcomers?

[Lennart Guldbrandsson]

Great! Thanks for your input.

First off, you can change anything you want. We'll test it and see what
works best. So if you want to point new users to the WikiProjects, that
perfectly fine. Just start another page, like a subpage to the page I linked
to, and create something that you think will be useful.

As I understand it, films are fair game. Do not worry about the hosting.
There are roughly 5500 people each day that create an account on English
Wikipedia. If everyone of them watch a movie, that's not very much in the
grand scheme of Wikipedia. Especially if we consider the beneficial impact
that video potentially could have. And if we see that videos are much better
at educating newcomers and creating faithful Wikipedians than just text, we
would be wrong to at least not entertain the idea of using videos and come
up with a plan to make it work.

Best wishes,

Lennart



2011/2/11 Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com>

> Hi Lennart
>
> Would this be related to merely modifying the welcome template or something
> a little more encompassing?
>
> One idea that I had was to somehow refer new visitors to WikiProjects or
> articles in need of expansion, based on some selection option where they
> can
> select their field of expertise or interest. An easy way to implement it
> would be providing an option to assign Categories to new users themselves,
> we would only need a front end with an attractive UI.
>
> We refer them through the welcome template to get started on what they
> like,
> they are referred to a tool which gives them several options from languages
> to fields to hobbies all based on categories and as they select those the
> categories are added to their user-page. The tool refers them at the end to
> WikiProjects and listed open tasks based on those selections.Its a similar
> option to what yahoo, hotmail used to have, options to select field of
> interests which they would use to for future marketing opportunities.
> Similar to that, just in a non-spammy, helpful way.
>
> I don't think embedding a video would be a feasible option, it might get
> very resource intensive to host and implement.
>
> I have added my suggestion to the outreach wiki, I was wondering if anyone
> else had any thoughts related to it.
>
> Theo
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <
> wikihannibal at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I know that some of you who are reading this have problems editing any
> > other
> > wiki than your home wiki. It feels foreign. I myself have that problem
> > sometimes. But now you have the chance to do something remarkable. You
> just
> > have to go to the Outreach wiki to do it.
> >
> > During the next 10 days, you can pitch in as many new versions of the
> pages
> > that the newcomers see when they get an account. For instance, if you
> think
> > that the newcomers should be met by a video that explains Wikipedia's
> > policies before they start editing, go ahead and make a page with a video
> > in
> > it! You can add as many different versions as you have the time or
> > inclination to do. And it doesn't have to be perfect, either. We have a
> > design firm that can help us make it look good later on, so you can
> > concentrate on what the text should be.
> >
> > By February 21st, we want at least five versions of the three different
> > pages that we can then do A/B tests on. (More versions are welcome, so do
> > not feel bad if your version becomes nr 6.)
> >
> > This is the link:
> >
> >
> >
> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project/Testing_content
> >
> > Please edit those pages as though they were your own wiki. Make yourself
> at
> > home on the Outreach wiki.
> >
> > You can read more about the Account Creation Improvement Project here:
> >
> > http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > Lennart
> >
> > --
> > Lennart Guldbrandsson, Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation and chair of
> > Wikimedia Sverige // Wikimedia Foundation-stipendiat och ordförande för
> > Wikimedia Sverige
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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-- 
Lennart Guldbrandsson, Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation and chair of
Wikimedia Sverige // Wikimedia Foundation-stipendiat och ordförande för
Wikimedia Sverige