Talk:CIS-A2K/Reports/Community Monthly Reports/Apr 2012

Talk page messages on Tamil Wikipedia - Suboptimal activity

I was surprised to see talk page messages on Tamil Wikipedia asking users to edit because there were no communication to the community. Things could have been done much better and in future I strongly suggest that any activity like these be consulted at village pump instead of doing autonomously for better.

• 14 of the 22 user accounts for which talk page messages were delivered does not exist. 2 Users were different users from the ones who attended training since account exists from 2010. The reason for this is accounts need to be created explicitly (by visiting them atleast once) as per m:Help:Unified_login. So the message was eventually delivered(with notification mail) to 6 people out of those who attended the academy. 4 of these users already got a welcome template after their first edits.

• The welcome template was in English. While there is no ban for using English for general communication in Tamil Wiki, but the messages like these should have been in Tamil, just as to keep instructions about how to edit are useful. For example, There is no edit button in Tamil. Its "தொகு" in Tamil interface. Articles suggested were in English title, which even if were created would have been deleted since there is a policy of no English titles in tawiki. That if happened would have been demotivating thing for the newbie.

• The help link was forwarded to English Wikipedia Teahouse, which is meant to assist English Wikipedia users. People there might not be best placed to help a new user from a different wiki.

• Effectiveness of outreach depends on followups. Effectiveness of followups also depend on the followup messages. Effectiveness of talk page messages is totally another thing because 4 of the users who attended the academy and edited (anyone who makes single edit) on Tamil Wikipedia gets a welcome message. But only a fraction stick around. That calls for checking effectiveness of templated message against individual messages. Nonetheless there are always better way of doing things (even for things like posting talk page message templates which don't yield better results). Please don't feel shy to leave a message in village pump before carrying out things like these, there are more people to help out make things better. Logicwiki (talk) 15:55, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

This was actually a mistake and done for 14 user pages on ta wiki. I was trying to use the bot for the first time and the messages were posted before the final draft was ready. (I was trying to send one to my user talk page to check how it appears and possible errors so I could correct them before sending to other talk pages. Unfortunately, it got sent off before it was ready. I had asked for help from a ta community member who has started fixing the wrong links. Similarly, I had not intended to send them to WP Teahouse; the post was still a draft. I am working on how best we can reach out to newbies and I shall take up your suggestion about asking for ideas and support from the ta village pump. --Subha WMF (talk) 09:22, 9 May 2012 (UTC)