Template talk:Welcome
Contents
Making this template useful
Right now, this template doesn't seem to get used at all and I think that's a shame. I think with a little improvement, this could be made good enough to let a bot slap it onto every new user's talk page.
My suggested changes are the following (obviously with wiki formatting and rewording):
Welcome to the wiki, here's how stuff works
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Editing Pages | Editing Talk Pages | FAQ
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Style guides: Weapon | Trivia | Images
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If you're looking for work: Team Fortress Wiki:Tasks | Where to ask questions
Each one of those is actually a link to a page with the following content:
- Editing Pages: Explains basic wiki syntax, how to treat protected pages, edit summary and other basic stuff.
- Editing Talk Pages: --~~~~, :, replying on the same page, don't remove stuff etc.
- FAQ: How do I get wiki cap? My stuff just got reverted, what do I do?
- Where to ask questions: explains where to ask what, i.e. user talk page if it's a user, article talk page if it's about the article, list of helpful people ("mentors" and/or wiki staff) who are willing to help/IRC channel if it's general
That way the "Wall of text" is avoided and new users have a place where to look for answers (I remember that this was one of the biggest challenges for me at the beginning). --CruelCow 10:37, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Show Preview button
I think we should insert text about Show preview button. Though that is explained in Help:Editing#Saving pages, it might be worth. What do you all think? – Kii (talk) 02:13, 10 June 2014 (PDT)
- I'm not sure about this. It might be worth adding a little notice like "Use the 'Show preview' button to etc." under the recent changes note, but I think this procedure should be clear anyway, since the SP button is bold already. { TidB | t | c } 02:20, 10 June 2014 (PDT)
Trivia
I know that reference to the Trivia guide is implicit under the Help:Style guide, but I think Trivia has been a common repeat problem for new editors and could be explicitly recommended in the Welcome. Mikado282 (talk) 05:32, 15 June 2014 (PDT)
Before editing
I would like to see added something like, "Before editing a page, it is recommended to first look at the page's History and Discussion pages." Mikado282 (talk) 05:53, 15 June 2014 (PDT)
Deprecation and deletion of the welcome template
Due to abuse by people thinking that they're helping by spamming new users this template has been considered for deprecation /or deletion in favor of a more helpful sidebar. Which has now been implemented as the help link goes to our help center page instead of the more wikitext-specific mediawiki help pages. Already the purpose of this template was questionable since the help center was already present and therefore it lead to useless spamming of the talk pages of new users and also created said page for no good reason. This is notable because new users often want to do these things of their own accord and populating their talk page should only be done when things like actual collaboration or warnings occur. Not to essentially paste a boilerplate welcome message. This decision is still under consideration however and it has been decided that further input is required from all parties. -- Lagg 
17:16, 2 July 2014 (PDT)
