[Foundation-l] Comparison of new user welcome efforts across projects

Sun Feb 4 06:15:54 UTC 2007

On 04/02/07, Roberto Alfonso <rpgrca at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a thought:
>
> I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no
> problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and
> can understand several other languages although not well enough to
> write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few
> Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe
> users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for
> every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really
> help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple
> common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's
> noticeboard, etc).

Yes. I think it would be a safe assumption that a person registering
an account, that doesn't speak the language of the project, MUST be a
Wikimedian doing routine things like interwiki.

For example FR.wp links from template:welcome to
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bistro_des_non-francophones/en
You can see on this page that they more or less assume the user is
familiar with Wikipedia. I think that is smart.
Compare to HU.wp's "welcome for non-speakers" -
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sablon:Welcome . IMO this should be
redone. If the user doesn't know enough Hungarian to comprehend a
welcome message, what is the point of giving them Village pump links?

Here is something that RTL wikis should take note of: non-speakers
would LOVE a link that gives some tips for editing in a RTL
environment. it can be really, really scary!

OK for Wikipedia, maybe we can create a universal "non-speaker's
welcome". It should be something like...

=============
Welcome to the X Wikipedia, Y!
* Put [[Wikipedia:Babel|]] boxes on your user page so others know how
well you can speak language X. You can put an interwiki link to your
English Wikipedia userpage by writing [[en:User:Y]].
* If you are updating interwiki links, please note that we
conventionally put the links [at the start|at the end] of the article
[before|after] the categories. You can put "updating interwiki links"
in X language in the edit summary by saying "...".
* If you notice vandalism, you can mark a page for speedy deletion by
putting {{...}}
* You can ask questions in your language at [[...]] or by contacting
someone in [[category:user languages]] (equiv.)
* A popular translator for X-to-English translation is [...]. Remember
that machine translations are only a rough guide :)
* Y is a RTL (right to left) language. This page [...] has advice on
editing in a RTL environment if you're not used to it. (if relevant)
=============

anything that's VITAL that I've missed? I think it should be
reasonably easy to gather translations for this and propogate it.

cheers,
Brianna