Webmasterworld welcoming message

Shorthand way of welcoming new members

[le_gber]

Some time ago - eons - was discussed who should welcome new members or members posting for the first time. What was decided back then? Who is "allowed" to welcome new members, or rather, who should the welcoming message come from? Admins and mods exclusively, the first person to reply to the post, anyone?

If the policy is to allow everyone to welcome new members, could we have our great admins whip up a small line of code that will change w2wmw (for example) into the Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] a bit like wmw become WebmasterWorld.

I'm only asking because I got to reply to 5 or 6 messages from new members today :)

[jatar_k]

everyone is encouraged to welcome new members, even if they're new member themselves

[phranque]

add my vote for a bestbbs [w2wmw] tag...

getting multiple welcomes from a variety of members would be a cultural improvement and would be very encouraging to new members...

[Marcia]

There can be pros and cons to anything. Welcoming people is great and should be done, but keep in mind that underlines on text (or bolding or italics) draw the eye away from surrounding text, and there are people who find excessive repetition seriously irritating, not to mention distracting (and off-topic).

There will always be people who dislike Intellitext type advertising, and seeing the same thing for the 10,000th time when it's emphasized with an underline could be just as irritating, as well as losing effectiveness for new members who catch on after they see it for the 10th time for themselves and then more for others. It starts to look automated rather than genuine.

There's a difference between a genuine, sincere welcome and automated "phony" responses. Repetitious automation doesn't convey sincerity any more than a nanny-bot (yes, they called it that) at a long-gone parenting community programmatically put out a welcome message when a new member with low post count or a returning member was detected.

IMHO 10 automated messages for someone who will never return after they get their problem solved isn't worth the possibility of annoying some regulars so that they'll start avoiding threads started by new members.

[le_gber]

Marcia, what about having a policy of only "allowing" one linked w2wmw per thread and then all the other welcome messages are unlinked :)

[phranque]

can anyone show me one thread that has multiple linked welcome messages?

[vincevincevince]

How about [w2WebmasterWorld recipient] as a BestBBS tag... which only displays when viewed by the recipient?

[bill]

I agree with Marcia's point about automated or canned welcome messages. I don't find them genuine, and it certainly wouldn't help things if everyone were using the same template.

Aside from this forum, I think it would be best to work a welcome into a well thought out response to a user's query. A bunch of templated welcome messages could become clutter otherwise.

[Hawkgirl]

I like the idea of being able to add a link to the "Welcome" post without having to type it all in. I don't use macros or shortcuts, so having the system do it for me would be nice.

Not a canned welcome message - the rest of the message would be customized. But just the ability to type a quickie 5 character word into the reply box and have the welcome message [webmasterworld.com] linked would ROCK.

[bill]

Hawkgirl do you use Opera?

With Opera notes you can add the code to a note and then it's available to you in a right-click menu in any text box. It's an invaluable part of my WebmasterWorld day. ;)

[Hawkgirl]

I use Opera at home ... Which means 75% of the time I'm using Safari on the iPhone. That's why I love the auto-replace idea!