On Mar 22, 2012 8:46 PM, "Cynthia Ashley-Nelson" <cindamuse(a)gmail.com> wrote: a Yes, this not difficult at all to add to Twinkle, and if the maintainers of the gadget are willing I think this should be one of the experiments we try. The idea of prompting normal handwritten comments as part of the interface was also suggested in the feedback from our recent test of PROD and AfD templates in Twinkle. Steven

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)frontier.com>wrote;wrote: Wikipedians: they cut you no slack whatsoever for imprecise adjectives, even if it's 9:30 at night. :) Steven

Automated welcome message are tricky on the English Wikipedia, because it's a tricky place to figure out why someone is editing, and how to communicate with them. A large number of contributors with new accounts either do not have a native level of English, are editing just because they can, are editing for promotional purpose (intentional or not), or simply don't know what to do. Reading the account's contribution history helps, as WereSpielChequers notes, but that doesn't tell when to template or when to simply write. Because of this, I think it is important that we foster intuition on what to write. If the account seems to be wanting simple information on how to edit based on lack of skill, I'll leave a sentence or two saying hello and follow with the welcome template. If the account's edits need personal interaction, I'll just write three or four sentences saying hello with a couple links followed by information on what seems to be the problem with their edits. I think this is fairly standard among those used to helping. It's a flowchart. If it does exist, please link. If not, please make :) -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan