Minecraft Wiki talk:Projects/Welcome

Starting Off
Anyone want to require ground rules or the order for discussion of topics, or is Free-For-All good enough? -Wulfenbach (not on fire for once) 01:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Brought Over from Community
(title snip)

The heading sums it up well enough.

I had considered just placing the concept on the Project page, and sketching out a brief framework on its attached sub-pages, but I am not too sure that there's an actual need.

Are there sufficient new users such that a welcome/newbie-patrol project is needed, or are the number of edits of sufficient number and quality that it is obvious that new members are picking up on the rules and culture of this wiki? Is there sufficient interest from existing members to participate in it such that establishing it is worthwhile (and not overtaxing)? -Wulfenbach (not on fire for once) 10:16, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Depends whether you want to go that way with welcoming users. I have a colleague who works for the Wikimedia Foundation and they did a study and found big annoying copypasted welcome templates were more likely to scare off users than help them assimilate into the wiki.
 * However, I'm not against the idea of giving newbies a directory to look up once they've made an account. My idea is to make a template at MediaWiki:Welcomecreation that outlines the welcomenewbie things we need to show them. That page is the first thing all new users see when making a new account. I think that's a must, whether we want to use that template is some sort of talk page welcome system is a separate issue IMO.  A NNOYING  12:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Doesn't sound like a bad idea; we have plenty of new users each day (10 to 20 or so?) and its never a bad thing to help newbies on their way, is it? So how would it look like? A simple FAQ, some examples, stuff like that?--Quatroking -  MCWiki Administrator  15:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I thought that it'd be better to poll newbie-need and participatory-desire first before moving onto the nitty-gritty of development and operations. I think any discussion of such would be best served on the Project page.  If I see another "yes, good idea/we need this" posted here, I'll post up the Project page and those interested can brainstorm therein. -Wulfenbach (not on fire for once) 22:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I would like to echo Aclectasis thoughts that creating big welcome templates is generally a fail situation as they tend to come off as overly official, and intimidating. I would recommend something more in the line of some dedicated wikiers who are willing to commit to being available to assist new editors upon request, as well as to just be more aware of new edits via the Recent Changes log, and willing to jump in and provide guidance to people who are obviously having difficulties. I do agree it is worth talking about, so I say create the project page and let's move the discussion there. -- Wynthyst [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon.png ]] talk  23:28, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * A project for this might be a little too much for a simple job. I've been doing this to some degree (a good example here) but I've been kinda putting less effort into it because it doesn't seem to have much effect. I think there should be a project to better beef up the help pages and formulate better guidelines for the wiki and then create article creation wizards/checklists (using the inputbox extension) to make things easier for them and for us by decreasing the amount of junk new pages we get.


 * On a semi-related note, welcome templates for talk pages should be an absolute no-no. They are horribly impersonal and just get ignored. --Gnu32 23:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There's no reason there can't be both project (Help pages and Wiki Helpers). Beefing up help pages don't do any good if people can't find them, don't have basic wiki coding skills, etc.. The Helpers could make those impersonal Help pages make sense, as well as point to them. I'm not so into wizards and checklists..... -- Wynthyst [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon.png ]] talk  23:52, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I think there's enough discussion here warranting the creation of the project and a talk page to discuss it all therein. The Project page is up (Welcome), and I'll be copy-pasting this to the talk page there for reference reasons. -Wulfenbach (not on fire for once) 01:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)