Wikipedia Easy Search

Real time tracking

Resources for Guides

Email templates

Guides (members)

Resources for New Users

"When I first joined..."

Project Talk page

RfC on socializing

RfC on CSD to userpage drafts

Minimizing talk page templates

RfC on new editors creating pages

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Closing statement. This is a long-term issue that has come up before. Indeed the proposal to use a bot was already a perrenial proposal before this started. The same issues that have prevented a policy or guideline on this topic in the past have come up again here. Many users feel that:

The templates are cold and impersonal.
There is no benefit to welcoming vandals or accounts that have not made a single edit.
Using a bot to welcome users is not actually very welcoming, more like junk mail.
Some users are actually annoyed to have been welcomed.

On the whole I see no consensus here for any particular course of action. What I do see is a general feeling that engaging on a personal level with users after actually seeing them make a good faith edit (not a good edit, just done in good faith) is preferable to any sort of identical blanket welcoming of all new users. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{rfctag|policy}}

In order to increase participation, Wikipedia should welcome new users.

This is part of a series of RfCs that came about early during the Wiki guides project. The objective is to generate new active contributors to help fulfill the Wikimedia Foundation's goal of increased participation. A recent update from the Wikimedia Foundation is helpful in understanding the need for new users. - Hydroxonium (talk) 06:49, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]