Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:45, 10 January 2008

• ]

Welcome to the welcoming committee (WC). We are a group of Wikipedians who greet new users and help them get started in various ways. There are no requirements for joining us except a good attitude and a willingness to show newcomers some of the ropes and field questions. Here's how you can help...

Welcome new users

Our main activity is to greet new users. To do that we post a welcome message on their talk pages (if they do not have a talk page yet, create one for them!). Often, it is best to post a personalized greeting composed directly from you to the new user. But to save time, you can use a premade greeting template or a cut-and-paste greeting or the abilities that FRIENDLY gives you.

Welcome templates

Be sure to place greetings on each user's talk page, not their user page; this will ensure they will receive the "You have new messages" automatic alert.

Click the link provided here for a full list of welcome templates.

Standard templates

The traditional template is {{Welcome}}. To use it, type this on a new user's talk page:

{{subst:welcome}} ~~~~

An updated version, with corrected links, optional message, and an eye catching formatting is {{Welcome!}}. Replacing "Yourusername" with your user name, post:

{{subst:Welcome!}}

or replace "message" with a comment and use:

{{subst:Welcome!|message}}

The Welcoming Committee's shortest greetings is {{Welcom}}, which provides a link to our welcome page. Type:

{{subst:welcom}}

Greeting anonymous new users

When welcoming new users who don't yet have accounts (their edits are logged by their IP address rather than a user name) it is best to suggest that they create one. To welcome such a user, type:

{{subst:anon}} ~~~~

OR...

{{subst:anon-welcome}} ~~~~

{{Wel}} automatically identifies anonymous users or registered users and provides the appropriate message:

{{subst:Wel}} ~~~~

List and gallery

The Welcoming Committee's complete collection of templates for welcoming new users is located at Misplaced Pages:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates; this includes adapted templates in the user space.

Misplaced Pages:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates/Table provides a visual gallery of welcome messages.

Vandals

You may come across a new user who has done nothing but vandalise articles. If their vandalism is minor, you might add a welcome and a warning to their talk page. For more serious cases, you probably should just add a warning. But whatever you do, please don't add a template that simply thanks them for their contributions — this sends the wrong message.

Making templates

If you would like to learn to encode templates, see Help:Template, Help:Magic words, Help:Variable, and m:ParserFunctions.

There are hundreds of thousands of users without any edits. It is widely accepted (but not required!) that users with no edits should not be welcomed to save on server resources and also because most templates start with "Thank you for your Contributions" (or similar). Furthermore, until edits are made, it's impossible to determine if the user has bad intentions, and created the account purposely to vandalize Misplaced Pages.

Where to find new users

Here are some ways to find new users:

• Check your watchlist – welcome the users who are working on the things you yourself are interested in. The new users are the ones with a red talk page link.
• Check Misplaced Pages's account creation log – this is especially useful with a quick link to their talk page, as well as an "at-a-glance" sign to tell if they've probably been welcomed already: their talk page isn't red linked!
• Special:ActiveUsers – a list of users who had some kind of activity within the last 30 days.
• New users can frequently be found seeking help at the Misplaced Pages:Teahouse and Misplaced Pages:Help desk.
• You will no doubt come across new users as you work on Misplaced Pages. You may spot them in the edit histories of pages or on talk pages. If a user's signature or username is in red, that indicates that they don't have a user page set up yet. That means they are very likely (but not always) a new user. Check their talk page to see if they've already been greeted (though there's no harm in greeting a new user again; you can always say "hi", and offer your assistance).
• Check the recent changes. If there is a new user, it will say as an edit summary: (New user account). These users will also be on the account creation log. You can then click on the red linked talk page and then greet them. This is also helpful if you are looking for newbies, vandalism, etc.
• Signing up to be a mentor here. You'll be automatically assigned to new users; you'll then be able to help them out and answer their questions. {{subst:Mentor welcome}} and {{subst:Mentor welcome-autosign}} can be used to welcome your proteges.
• Try the {{welcome needed}} template. This configurable template generates a search link which lists recently created user talk pages which have a had a user warning placed on them but as yet lack a welcome message. Example: {{welcome needed}} → search link.

|}

Help new users

If the new user responds to the welcome message (you may wish to put his talk page on your watchlist), follow up with more help. You may wish to suggest adoption.

Most welcome templates instruct users to place a {{helpme}} request on their tak page if they need assistance, so it may be beneficial to check Category:Wikipedians looking for help frequently.

Members of the WC should be especially careful not to bite newcomers.

Help staff, maintain, and improve Misplaced Pages's newcomer resources

In addition to greeting new users, we also design and help maintain pages specifically to assist newcomers in various ways. The pages we help operate and/or maintain are:

• Welcome to Misplaced Pages — our main welcome page.
• Misplaced Pages:Introduction
• Tutorial
• Misplaced Pages:Questions — the "where to ask a question" directory.
• FAQs & VFAQs — quick answers to the most common questions.
• Misplaced Pages:New contributor's help page — this is a place for new users to post questions and get an answer (usually within minutes) by volunteers who monitor or frequent the page. We like to hang out there and assist the best we can.
• Misplaced Pages:Help desk — where volunteers answer questions on how to use Misplaced Pages. Many new users go there for help too.
• Misplaced Pages:Adopt-a-User — where a new user can be adopted by an experienced user who will be his or her mentor/tutor.

Plot and plan

As an active team, we discuss and implement new projects from time to time. We also discuss new users in general and try to keep in touch with the experience a typical new user is likely to be subjected to upon discovering and participating in Misplaced Pages. Sometimes the treatment they receive from veterans can be confusing or even traumatic. So we try to come up with ways to prevent this sort of thing. To participate, please see the talk page.

Add yourself to our member list

If you would like to see who we are, or add yourself to our noble ranks, check out Misplaced Pages:Welcoming committee/members.

See also

• WikiProject Community
• Edits by newcomers to Misplaced Pages
• Account creation log
• Vandalism messages

• Wikipedian organizations