Wikiversity talk:Welcoming committee

Welcome process
I've been following this practice: I look at Recent changes for a user with a redlinked "discuss" page. If the user has edited any WV page, including their user page, with anything that seems legitimate or a good-faith effort to do something useful or even merely allowed (such as creating their own user page), I welcome them, with the welcome template, and use an edit summary of "welcome". I do not welcome-template IPs because those are often unstable, not the same user. I do not welcome on raw account creation. (This appears to match prior practice.)

In order to make this process more efficient, I will here sign, below, with timestamp when I last reviewed Recent Changes for such situations. I will replace my signature whenever I have an update on that. I'll ask others who want to cooperate with this to similarly sign, let the most recent signature be at the top. (And I'll delete older signatures of mine, I recommend that others do the same.) In this way, we don't have to duplicate the labor of looking for unwelcomed users. If issues arise, please discuss below this comment or in a new section.

(I have only gone back so far in reviewing changes, it is possible that some qualifying edits still exist in Recent changes, but if this process is maintained, with each new signature below affirming that the process has been completed since the previous signature, this will become efficient and effective.) --Abd 18:25, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I've been doing the same lately. I pretty much use the exact same process you described above. I'm only doing this because I feel if we greet people who look like they are interested they will be more likely to get connected with the community and stay. One of Facebook's causes of success is that the social aspect it provides is so engaging to the average user that they ending up spending more time on Facebook than the average user of another website. Once the WV community begins to grow more and more content will eventually be produced and it'll basically follow something similar to Wikipedia's growth. Anyways, I don't think I'll update my signature here though... I feel too lazy and like it's an extra step. I just randomly peruse the recent edits page to see what's happening here. There is relatively little activity that a person can go through a whole days of changes in an hour or less. Relatively speaking in comparison to WP. Devourer09  ( t · c ) 22:48, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It's up to you. If you don't sign here, it simply means that I'll need to review the same set of changes, but I'll notice quickly that you have already welcomed; I just can't assume a specific time. I'll still update my signature here, so feel free to stop your search at that time, or not, as you like. There are other values to reviewing Recent Changes, of course. --Abd 02:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

One more point. If a user's edit is spam or vandalism, I don't "welcome." I may not do anything but revert the spam or vandalism. That way, next time I sweep for newcomers editing, I'll again see the redlinked talk page and check the contribution. If it's decent, I'll go ahead and welcome. Otherwise, I might, looking at contributions, ask for custodial attention.

One of the utilities of looking for new users to welcome is that naive vandalism is often caught this way. --Abd 01:21, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Last review of Recent Changes

 * Abd 23:29, 7 October 2011 (not necessarily checked before Oct 4.)

Objection to welcoming practice.
In this Colloquium comment, a user objected to my welcoming process. I'm describing that process, as it exists now, so that we can discuss it and possibly so that we can agree upon broader standards to apply to welcoming. Regardless, of any standards we settle upon, any user may welcome any other user, as an individual action, based on some personal knowledge of that user, and encouragement of the user, just as any user may warn, on their own personal responsibility. The standards I'm applying and following apply to "mass welcoming," "routine welcoming," or the like.


 * I set up Recent Changes to display all edits for logged-in users, back to the last known review.
 * I review the edits for general purposes, but specifically, as to Welcoming, I specially look for two things:
 * Redlinked user talk pages.
 * User talk pages created by the user, not by someone else. (New user talk pages created by another new user may also get some special attention)
 * I then look at Contributions for such users.
 * If I see vandalism or linkspam, and no positive contributions, I may block the user. If the problem is blatant, I do not warn the user or explain the block on the user talk page. (This was considered controversial, but I'll explain it below.) (For non-admins participating in welcoming, the equivalent of blocking is requesting block on RCA. I do not suggest warning blatant vandals or linkspammers on Wikiversity. -- but, caution, "linkspam" and "links to personal web sites" are not the same. If the user may have a collaborative purpose in placing a link, the user should not be blocked.)
 * If I block, I do not welcome at that time. Normally, I leave the user Talk page access. For known linkspammers and cross-wiki vandals, I may shut it all down. (Hence, for non-admins, I do not recommend placing anything on the Talk page where you would recommend a block.)
 * If I see a positive contribution, or potentially positive contribution, such as a test edit to the Sandbox, I template the user's talk page with the welcome template. I copy this template into the edit summary and save the page.
 * If I see potentially positive or good faith contributions, but "errors," I may welcome *and* warn or "complain." I word the warning gently, assuming good faith, and truly welcoming and inviting cooperation. I may not continue to do this if the user continues with the problems without discussion, but this is now outside the realm of the Welcoming committee. The user has been welcomed and the Talk page is no longer redlinked.
 * If I have time to look for IP vandalism, I then hide logged-in users. I do not formally welcome IP editors, because usually the IPs are not stable. My general practice is to encourage account creation and use at Wikiversity, because it reduces site maintenance labor. --Abd 19:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Discussion
My welcoming practice has resulted from experience as a Recent Changes patroller here, and particularly as one also looking, as a custodian, for vandalism and linkspam. Once a user talk page has edits, the edit no longer stands out so clearly in Recent Changes, and vandalism and linkspam are no longer as easily caught. When RCP is more formally organized here, which will probably require formal "duty periods," where specific users mark off that they have reviewed all recent changes for a defined time period, the redlinking may become irrelevant. Wikipedia never set up structure to make RCP efficient, and thus it can be very spotty there, in spite of many RCP volunteers. The flow of edits is too great, but with the number of volunteers, and some system, all edits could, in fact, be carefully reviewed. Instead it's a game of Whack-a-Mole, with points to the user who first catches a problem, never mind that a dozen other editors saw and tried to revert that within a minute. This encourages snap judgments.

We have the opportunity at Wikiversity to set up better systems while we are still small.

But some possible welcoming practices can interfere with this. It is not that they are forbidden, but that they do not fit within an overall site management philosophy, making site management more difficult, less effective, or less efficient. I'd see the welcoming practice as becoming tighter, not looser. For example, I welcome, and intend to continue to welcome, for test edits to the Sandbox, or the user's User page. If such an edit shows an intention to cooperate, that's fine. But what if it's just, say, the user's initials placed in the Sandbox? Not so clear. We may wish to wait for an actually useful edit or attempt to positively participate or cooperate -- or even just to learn.

In any case, by following the standards I've proposed and that I use, any user can help with Recent Changes patrol, or just with welcoming itself. When I see users welcoming outside these standards, I've often asked them to consider doing it differently. Most users simply cooperate with this, but occasionally a user has taken offense, as if I were ordering them to follow my suggestions. That's unfortunate, but it has happened. For the future, I will attempt, even more carefully, to make it clear that these are suggestions, seeking cooperation. --Abd 19:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I just came across an example of the possible problem with welcoming users without a review of their edits. Lgonfa15 was welcomed after making 9 edits, all of which were spam or vandalism, it's unclear which. (The net result of the edits.) The vandalism was found and corrected the next day, by an IP editor with no other edits to Wikiversity.


 * The reductio ad absurdem of the practice of incautious welcome is found at User talk:Abusemerump, which may have been a deliberate trap.


 * When we have had users welcoming who don't review the edits to see that they are reasonable, before welcoming, other recent changes patrollers may overlook the edits, seeing that the talk page is no longer a redlink. It's not reliable, and a sophisticated vandal/spammer might edit their own talk page, but every little bit of practice that helps catch vandalism and spam is useful; at the same time, having a real user welcome new users is far better than the practice of using a bot on some wikis, which doesn't feel welcoming to me at all. On one wiki, I looked *once* at a page there and saw the message notification immediately. It is apparent that a really fast bot had seen my page request, identifying me from SUL information, and had managed to add the welcome template before the page was served up to me. A bot welcome doesn't feel sincere to me, and it creates no user who will be watching my Talk page, perhaps to help if some problem comes up. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)