I really like the newcomer welcome page. I also really like what ciphergoth and others are doing with their self-introductions; explaining when and how they came to LW, and a little about their perspective and what their goals are in LW . While this is a big step in the right direction, I think it could go further to be a lot better.
When a newcomer comes to LW, a warm welcome consists of two parts. First, they introduce themselves to you; this is the welcome page. Second, an introduction from you should be available to them, at the click of a button. When you first arrive at LW, it feels like a huge dark opera hall of masked voices. It would be great if whenever you read an interesting comment, you can click on that person’s name and read their self-introduction. The problem with the welcome page as it is currently built is that it would difficult for a newcomer to retrieve introductions over the weeks or months that they are getting to know us.
I don’t know how Reddit works, but it just occurred to me that one simple solution would be to make comments written on the welcome page special so that they’re always listed first in the list of comments, regardless of when it was written.
You might consider changing the phrase “please feel free to leave a comment”—it might be more welcoming to just ask people to “please leave a comment”, giving the impression that we want to hear from them. (Though I’m not confident this would be better.)
It would be nice to invite questions, not only on LW jargon (which you do), but on the etiquette of posting and voting, why those mean people may have downvoted one of your comments (and why you shouldn’t take that to mean we won’t appreciate you), etc. I’m not sure how to gracefully incorporate this into your text.
Eliezer should add a link from LW’s “About” page. (Except, the link should move somehow with the month’s welcome thread, if we have new ones every month. What’s your plan here?)
hmm, here’s a spiel on voting and karma, I’m a little worried that it sounds too forbidding—what do you think?
You may have noticed that all the posts and all the comments on this site have buttons to vote them up or down, and all the users have “karma” scores which come from the sum of all their comments and posts. Try not to take this too personally. Voting is used mainly to get the most useful comments up to the top of the page where people can see them. It may be difficult to contribute substantially to ongoing conversations when you’ve just gotten here, and you may even see some of your comments get voted down. Don’t be discouraged by this. If you’ve any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.
My non-confident impression is that it’s good. One slightly friendlier suggestion would be to replace “Don’t be discouraged by this.” with “Don’t be discouraged by this; it happened to many of us.”
giving the impression that we want to hear from them.
Is “We’d love to know who you are, what you’re doing, and how you found us.” too strong do you think?
2 Good idea—let’s see what I can come up with....
What’s your plan here?
Yeah, I’m not sure how well this works with the one-a-month structure. Ideally I’d like this thread to be stickied to the front page, but I know that requires some admin-help.
hmm, here’s a spiel on voting and karma, I’m a little worried that it sounds too forbidding—what do you think?
You may have noticed that all the posts and all the comments on this site have buttons to vote them up or down, and all the users have “karma” scores which come from the sum of all their comments and posts. Try not to take this too personally. Voting is used mainly to get the most useful comments up to the top of the page where people can see them. It may be difficult to contribute substantially to ongoing conversations when you’ve just gotten here, and you may even see some of your comments get voted down. Don’t be discouraged by this. If you’ve any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.
Good idea. With the threads for introductory posts linked to from the (to be built) welcome page, and with newcomers encouraged to introduce themselves and ask questions.
Regular open threads for introductory posts?
how’s this?
I really like the newcomer welcome page. I also really like what ciphergoth and others are doing with their self-introductions; explaining when and how they came to LW, and a little about their perspective and what their goals are in LW . While this is a big step in the right direction, I think it could go further to be a lot better.
When a newcomer comes to LW, a warm welcome consists of two parts. First, they introduce themselves to you; this is the welcome page. Second, an introduction from you should be available to them, at the click of a button. When you first arrive at LW, it feels like a huge dark opera hall of masked voices. It would be great if whenever you read an interesting comment, you can click on that person’s name and read their self-introduction. The problem with the welcome page as it is currently built is that it would difficult for a newcomer to retrieve introductions over the weeks or months that they are getting to know us.
I don’t know how Reddit works, but it just occurred to me that one simple solution would be to make comments written on the welcome page special so that they’re always listed first in the list of comments, regardless of when it was written.
I like it :). Two small suggestions:
You might consider changing the phrase “please feel free to leave a comment”—it might be more welcoming to just ask people to “please leave a comment”, giving the impression that we want to hear from them. (Though I’m not confident this would be better.)
It would be nice to invite questions, not only on LW jargon (which you do), but on the etiquette of posting and voting, why those mean people may have downvoted one of your comments (and why you shouldn’t take that to mean we won’t appreciate you), etc. I’m not sure how to gracefully incorporate this into your text.
Eliezer should add a link from LW’s “About” page. (Except, the link should move somehow with the month’s welcome thread, if we have new ones every month. What’s your plan here?)
hmm, here’s a spiel on voting and karma, I’m a little worried that it sounds too forbidding—what do you think?
My non-confident impression is that it’s good. One slightly friendlier suggestion would be to replace “Don’t be discouraged by this.” with “Don’t be discouraged by this; it happened to many of us.”
Thanks for building us the welcome thread.
I like that
No problem =)
1 Done =)
Is “We’d love to know who you are, what you’re doing, and how you found us.” too strong do you think?
2 Good idea—let’s see what I can come up with....
Yeah, I’m not sure how well this works with the one-a-month structure. Ideally I’d like this thread to be stickied to the front page, but I know that requires some admin-help.
hmm, here’s a spiel on voting and karma, I’m a little worried that it sounds too forbidding—what do you think?
Good idea. With the threads for introductory posts linked to from the (to be built) welcome page, and with newcomers encouraged to introduce themselves and ask questions.
I just had a go at an introductory/welcome page. Any suggestions?
welcome
The monthly Open Thread may be repurposed to also act as a more fleshed-out introductory & welcome thread.