Infosphere:Welcoming Committee

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Welcome to the Welcoming Committee of The Infosphere.

Who We Are

The welcoming committee is a group of people who kindly greet new users and help them get started (if needed). If you want to help out, the most obvious thing you can do is post welcome messages and be friendly and helpful with new users you meet. The easiest way to identify new users is from the recent changes list. The new user's username or talk page will be red because they haven't been created, yet. Once you're on the user page, you can click "User contributions" on the sidebar to see how many edits they've done. Also be sure to check the history of the talk page to verify that no one has already welcomed them (they may have deleted the first welcome message).

Note that joining the committee confers neither responsibilities nor privileges, but members are expected to do some welcoming — we don't want to simply clutter up this page with member names.

You should also have a basic technical understanding of the wiki so that you can answer any questions an inexperienced user might have.

Don't Bite

Don't get frustrated if a newcomer or some IP makes a mistake—let it slide and give him a friendly note telling them what they did.

Standards for Welcoming

A good welcome message should be around the lines of the following template.


Welcome!

Welcome to the Infosphere! We're glad to have you as a member. If you need any help, feel free to ask anyone on the welcoming committee. You can also post questions on the FAQ talk page.

New users must read the help pages before creating a new page.

Here are some tips to get you started:

  • If you need general information, editing tips, or answers to frequently asked questions, check out the help page.
  • Before you do any significant editing, be sure to familiarize yourself with our wiki standards and our Manual of Style.
    • If you have an idea for a major change that will help The Infosphere, suggest it over at the Conference Table.
  • If you want to create a new article, make sure that it doesn't already exist and that the article you've created is linked to from another article. Our article templates should help you out.
  • If you're not sure what you can do to help out, head over to current events.
  • To practice editing, go over to the playground.
  • You can help decide what's on the Main Page by voting on Featured Articles or making new nominations.
  • You can also use "{{subst:UserpageTemplate}}" on your Userpage, if you wish to have a simple starting point. Additionally, you can make use of userboxes.
  • Remember to sign your posts to talk pages by using four tildes (~~~~). Alternatively, you can create a custom signature at User:Welcoming Committee/sig, and insert it by typing {{User:Welcoming Committee/sig}}, preferably followed by five tildes to insert the date. This can also be configured on the Special:Preferences page.
  • If you have a personal website (Futurama-centric or completely unrelated), feel free to add it to the Community Portal.
  • Above all, be sure to be bold and have fun!

Feel free to delete this message when you're done reading it. After all, your user space belongs to you. I hope this information is helpful, and that you'll have a good experience contributing to our knowledge-base and our community.

Sincerely,
~~~, and "The Infosphere Welcoming Committee" ~~~~~


To use the template, type "{{subst:welcome}}", which will automatically include your signature and a timestamp. (Typing subst before the name of the template tells the system to copy a static version of the template to the page.)

This can also be used when first getting in touch with anonymous editors, just use "{{subst:welcome|IP}}" instead, however they are generally only welcomed when they seem to be sticking around without registering. Hints that an IP might be here for a while include page creation, in-depth changes, detailed comments on edits or performing more than a handful of edits. Be aware that there may actually be multiple persons at a given IP and that the user you think you are welcoming may have changed IPs already after having turned off their computer.

If a new user or an IP adds joke or test content that needs to be cleaned up, use {{subst:welcome/test}}


Be as kind and welcoming as possible and answer any questions they might have.

When creating your own personal template, you don't have to follow the original layout exactly. You can rearrange it and reword it, but please include the MediaWiki User's Guide, Help:Standards, Help:FAQ and Help:Editing pages within the text. Like the general welcome template, be sure to use the subst: command to substitute, rather than link, your template on a user's talk page.

Members

(Please remember only to join if you plan to do some Welcoming)

  1. Buddy13
  2. Quolnok
  3. Sanfazer
  4. Teyrn of Highever
  5. Aki
  6. Kif