Wikiversity:Welcoming committee

Who we are
The welcoming committee is an informal group of contributors who greet new users and help them get started. There are no requirements for joining, and no explicit responsibilities—and you don't need to be a part of this committee to welcome new users. However, many of us are willing to spread the odd wing, and devote a little time to mentoring on an 'as needed' informal basis.

We believe that the strength of a growing wiki lies in its ability to attract new dedicated members to assist in contributing to articles and taking care of janitorial tasks.

What we do
The welcoming committee simply welcomes new users. Preferably we should welcome users the moment they sign up, however, this is not a requirement. The intention is that new users will feel welcome and be more inclined to participate productively in Wikiversity.

How to welcome
Currently, there is a template that can be used to welcome members at Template:Welcome. This can be added to new users' talk pages by typing " " on the page. (The template is "substituted" in order to add your signature automatically.) Even shorter, use.

You can also add Template:Random mascot—or use Template:wmas (i.e, to automatically add both the welcome template and a random mascot template.

Also, try to engage with whatever pages the person is editing—even just to say "thanks for your edits to "pagename"". You can check the user's contributions by substituting their username in Special:Contributions/USERNAME or by going to their userpage (even if they don't have one yet) and clicking on the "user contributions" link in the left-hand sidebar. (If no pages come up, they haven't made any contributions.)

Checking Special:Log/newusers can help keep track of newly logged-in users. You can also keep track of this in recent changes.

In general, it is common practice to welcome new accounts which have edited pages. It is not considered necessary to welcome accounts which have no editing history (other than account registration). It may actually be harmful to welcome users with no edits, see the attached Talk page.

See Wikiversity talk:Welcoming committee for current welcoming activity.

Members
See here for active members of this committee, and please sign up if you're interested—this is an open committee!

Tasks

 * Discussion about the current welcome template—see Template talk:Welcome
 * Coordinate between School and university projects and Wikiversity outreach in order to encourage people to participate in Wikiversity - before and after joining up.