BoyWiki:Agora/29 April 2016

Making things easy for new editors at BoyWiki

I have noticed that people often register to be editors at BoyWiki, and then just seem to disappear without ever creating any articles or making an edits to any articles. Perhaps some here at BoyWiki expect this, and think it to be normal behavior, but to me it seems a little strange.

I believe that immediately directing new editors to "the help pages" may overwhelm new editors and discourage them.

I would like to make the following suggestions.

1) The user's page should be created along with the welcome message on the user's talk page.

* A new editor, when clicking on his "user page," is suddenly confronted with the choice of creating the page or not. This may discourage some editors who are timid or unsure of themselves.

2) Certain very basic information should be placed directly on the new user's page. The information should include:

• basic information on the five most often-used formatting styles:

• bold, italic, bold/italic, and indenting with the asterisk and the colon

• A sentence explaining how to create a new section (which automatically creates a Table of Contents) using the equal sign ==COPY THIS, THEN PASTE IT TO CREATE A NEW SECTION==

• several "sample" sections should be created for the new user

• "About me," "Notes to myself," etc.

• suggestions should be included in the "About me" section, regarding information the new user could put on the his user page to introduce himself to others (and information on what NOT to put--personally identifying information!)

• very simple instructions on how to create a new article (the easiest way, of course, is just to edit the Address bar in the browser, then press enter, and click on the "create a new article" link.)
• very simple instructions on searching the BoyWiki site

3) A short "suggestion list" of articles the new user could create create

• articles about boy celebrities

• perhaps his favorite film and music "boystars"

• his feelings/questions/doubts about being a BoyLover
• articles that take advantage of his "specialty," should be have on

• e.g. legal information, sports information, etc. etc.

• personal experiences about his encounters with legal authorities

etc. etc.

4) Very basic "templates"

• a "create article" sample [[PLACE NEW ARTICLE NAME HERE]] with instructions to edit the foregoing, save his user page, then click the newly created link to create his new article
• a sample of "four tildes" ~~~~ that he can copy to sign his posts in talk pages

I have several more ideas, but as I may simply be wasting my time by making these comments, I will save any further suggestions until if/when some interest is shown in these comments. User4 (talk) 14:25, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, this is a good idea and if you want to start working on it feel free... --Etenne 14:39, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

On further thought, what I want you to do is write a draft page for the new info then we can add it to BoyWiki:New user information and then I can replace the link to the help pages with that page in automated message: Welcome to BoyWiki! We hope you will contribute much and well. You will probably want to read the help pages.--Etenne 14:51, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Uh, perhaps I neglected to ever tell you that actually I respond much much better to suggestions rather than to straight directions. With me (and--who knows?--maybe with others as well) something like "I would appreciate it if you could (when you have the time)..." rather than "I want you to...".

Excuse me for not having made this "peculiarity" of my personality (a "peculiarity" which appears to be quite common among other humans as well, according to Dale Carnegie in his book which I linked to) clearer in the past.

I'll consider writing up something dealing with "what you want me to do," (but not right now--sometime later--when I feel like doing it) OK? User4 (talk) 15:11, 29 April 2016 (UTC)