[WikiEN-l] Unused userboxes

Tue Feb 21 14:11:25 UTC 2006

On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:46:30 -0800, you wrote:

>If you look at RC, new articles, etc, you'll see thousands of editors
>working away. A great many of them are just rambling on about their
>boring high schools and deservedly-obscure garage bands (or adding
>userboxes), and there are quite a few who never go on to do anything
>more substantive. So we have plenty of participants, just not enough
>of the kind that add much value to the project.

I think there is a need to engage more with the newbies, to be more
creative in how we welcome them, for example pointing those who are
writing about their high school club to the Schools project where they
will find an unending source of to-do waiting for them.  Of course,
since many of them are motivated primarily by a desire to document
their high school club this may not be productive.  But it might be.

Userfying instead of speedying (except for blatant copyvios, and I
don't include copy & paste from their own website here) is also more
welcoming.

The downside of that is that I now spend a lot of my time on the
project doing those things and not writing articles myself.  I'm not
an especially good editor, so it's no loss, but it does feel good
sometimes to just shut the door on that crap and do something else.  I
might start using my old account for main-space edits...
Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG