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 <
[hidden email]> 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, <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> > Send foundation-l mailing list submissions to
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> > 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 <
[hidden email]>
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> > <
[hidden email]>
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] User talk templates
> > Message-ID: <
[hidden email]>
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
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