Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee/Archive 1

This talk page is intended to host discussion of how to better welcome and integrate new users into the Wikipedia communittee. It also, of course, serves as a talk page for discussing what should go on the Welcoming committe page it's associated with.

One thing to put there (which I'll add soon if noone else does) is some boilerplate texts for welcoming new members. I personally feel that it's nicer to customize your own, but these should give people something to start with.

Another feature I'd like to see, but which I'm pretty sure would have to be written in by a developer, would be to have an automatic listing here of all new non-anonymous accounts that have been created in the last week or so. This would be useful to anyone who feels like helping a new user enter the community. It would also be a good resource for anyone who wants to follow up on new users to edit and correct their work (which is of course the most likely to contain errors and problems of all sorts.) Isomorphic 12:50, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The list is something that a sysop can obtain using an SQL query, but I'm wary of running one at the moment while the servers are dodgy. Once things are more stable I will be happy to provide this. Angela. 15:32, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

We need more committees. - Hemanshu 16:20, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Personalized Welcoming

After wecloming this user, I got the idea that we might have welcoming committee members welcome users who are in either their geographic region, or age bracket. I believe this will make users feel more welcome than they do from the stock welcome notice. I would like users to sign up at Wikipedia:Welcoming Committee in two separate sections, their geographic region, and their age group. Alexandros 17:12, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a nice idea but most new users don't state their age or where they're from so I don't see how that would work. By the way, Ugen's been here since August so your welcome message actually duplicated my old one! (Another problem with people blanking their talk pages). Angela 18:31, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree it is a great idea. How about by interest? Too bad new users don't list themselves right away. Noldoaran

Well, there's no harm in someone getting two welcomes - a boilerplate-type one whenever someone notices a new user, and then an interest-related specific one by someone who shares their interest. Angela

Good idea. —Noldoaran (Talk) 03:58, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

With regard to personalized welcoming, I just had an idea. I'm creating a "new user log" where new users can sign in and put their interests. We'll have to see if new users actually use it, but if they do it'll be handy. That way, a veteran can look at the new user log, see what the user is interested in, and point them in the right direction (and maybe even introduce them to people working on those areas.) Isomorphic 00:47, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. Other wikis have similar things on pages like Meatball:RecentVisitors, which seem to work, so hopefully it will here too. It might be good o add a link to this page on the boilerplate welcome message to see if that encourages people to add their name. If that doesn't work after a couple of weeks, we could try adding some false entries, but it would be nice to see if we can get some real ones first. Angela. 07:01, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)