Submissions/Welcome to Wikipedia, now please go away: improving how we communicate with new editors

From Wikimania 2012 • Washington, D.C., USA

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no. 90
Title of the submission
Welcome to Wikipedia, now please go away: improving how we communicate with new editors
Type of submission
presentation
Authors of the submission
Steven Walling, Maryana Pinchuk, Ryan Faulkner (not attending)
E-mail address
swalling@wikimedia.org, mpinchuk@wikimedia.org
Username
User:Steven (WMF), User:Maryana (WMF)
Country of origin
USA
Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)
Wikimedia Foundation
Abstract
On English Wikipedia and many other projects, automated warnings and welcomes currently make up about 80% of first messages to new editors.

Standardized template messages -- warnings, welcomes, deletion notices, and more -- have become the number one form of communication to new Wikimedians over the last decade of our history as a movement. With the power of bots and other automated editing tools, most Wikimedia projects (both large and small) have completely remade how user talk pages look and feel to new and anonymous contributors.

For better or worse, this is the landscape in which most newbies find themselves. The question is: how can we adapt these templates to help us build great projects and healthy communities?

Starting last year, the Wikimedia Foundation staff and community members on five wikis -- English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, the Incubator and Commons -- have collaboratively developed a method to improve our user talk templates. This talk will be a report on the results from testing tens of thousands of user talk templates.

Twinkle, the most popular gadget on several projects, delivers thousands of warnings, welcomes, and deletion notifications every month

We hope that by sharing our results from all the projects, we can begin a conversation with community members about what kinds of changes to templates can help reduce vandalism and encourage good faith editors to learn how to navigate the projects. Template testing (done in a wiki-centric way) can empower your community to reach an informed consensus about how to communicate to new and anonymous editors.

The session will also briefly touch on how new software tools being developed in the community (such as the desktop application Huggle) and at the Wikimedia Foundation (the Visual Editor, Feedback Dashboard, Page Triage) will impact how user talk templates are delivered on the projects.

Outline:

  1. Why test user talk templates?
  2. How to test user talk templates
  3. Results of template tests on five Wikimedia projects
  4. What we do about these results, and where to learn more
  5. How new software will impact user talk templates
  6. Q&A (as time allows)
Track
WikiCulture and Community
Length of presentation/talk
25 Minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes

Interested attendees

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  1. WereSpielChequers (talk) 23:41, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
  3. Lvova (talk) 17:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. the wub "?!"
  5. Tfinc (talk) 23:06, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. —Tom Morris (talk) 23:07, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Haxpett (talk) 23:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  8. MarkDilley (talk) 00:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  9. HstryQT (talk) 01:30, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Pemba (talk) 02:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Kgladstone (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  13. SarahStierch (talk) 23:19, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Graham87 (talk) 13:38, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  15. David Shankbone (talk) 17:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Versageek (talk) 16:00, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  17. NaBUru38 (talk) 16:40, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Kudpung (talk) 14:49, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Elly Koepf (WMDE) (talk) 08:44, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Michelledavison (talk) 01:08, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Foxj (talk) 14:44, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Srikeit (talk) 14:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Oz750 (talk) 14:48, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 18:40, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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