On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 11:55 PM, Mateus Nobre <mateus.no...@live.co.uk> wrote: > > This hostility is being reflected in the drop at the number of the editors.I > agree with the ''automatic-message theory''. None likes automatic messages. > In my view, it should be reserved for vandals. > Newbies needs a special priority. Something like: ''Hi, thanks for your > edition! We hope you become part of our team. If you need anything, just talk > to us''. > It's not hard to do, is it?
It's not "hard" as in difficult but it would be "hard" as in laborious and time consuming. I went through a phase of attending to my watchlist and whenever I saw a user-page red-linked and the associated edit was a positive contribution I went ahead and Twinkled them a user page welcome notice. I'd welcome tens of people a day this way. I'm afraid there is little chance of me welcoming tens of users with even a personalised message I had written myself and could simply copy and paste. The task would simply be too dull and repetitive for me. Even with Twinkle it's still boring. If I wanted to bore myself in my free time I'd take up a job that paid. If we wish to welcome the huge amounts of newbie editors with a form of personalisation, I suggest we invest in artificial intelligence. If nothing else the results would probably be hilarious and bring unintentional joy wherever it attempted to help, like those sites devoted to Engrish. I read a quote recently which ran something like "enjoyment of one's tools is essential to great work". For the most part I find MediaWiki very pleasant to use and things have definitely moved in the right direction since I joined in 2004. But I was familiar with the concept of mark-up having dabbled with HTML when I began, so I can't really empathise with the average web user who is immediately baffled by what they see when they click 'edit' for that first time. Bodnotbod _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
