«- Memory Alpha: Policies and Guidelines
Memory Alpha, like any wiki, relies not just on its dedicated members to expand its content base, but also on new members who are thinking about joining the project. Newcomers are the community's most valuable "resource," because they help us to expand and spread the work around.
Therefore, it's important that we kindly welcome new members to our community. Newcomers are, by definition, generally unfamiliar with the policies and customs that the rest of us mostly take for granted. Once they're acclimated to our practices, they'll probably become productive members and a part of our community.
Here are a few general tips that can help welcome new members:
- Remember their value. New members are potential assets to our community. Consider them an opportunity rather than a nuisance.
- Politely point out mistakes. Make sure you look like you're providing helpful hints rather than aggressively criticizing their work. Hostility will drive newcomers away!
- Encourage boldness. Help newcomers realize that it's okay to be bold when updating pages! Memory Alpha is a continuous work-in-progress, so it's okay if there are little mistakes.
- Always give the benefit of the doubt. Assume that a newcomer is interested in helping out, and is simply unfamiliar with our guidelines rather than flaunting the rules. Give them a chance to learn — not everyone has the patience to RTFM ahead of time!
- Remember, everyone was a newcomer once! (Well, unless you're Harry or Dan. ;-))
Standard User Greeting
The following is a possible greeting that you might use to welcome new members. It's not required, and in fact improvisation is encouraged, so go ahead and write your own, if you feel like it.
- Hello, NAME, and welcome to Memory Alpha! I've noticed that you've already made a number of edits — I hope you like what we're doing and decide to stick around. If you need some help, be sure to visit [[Memory Alpha:how to edit a page|]] or our [[Memory Alpha:Help|help pages]]. We do have some rules to guide our community, so please take a few minutes to read our [[Memory Alpha:Policies and Guidelines|]] and [[Memory Alpha:Manual of Style|]]. If you need pointers on how we name new articles, see [[Memory Alpha:naming conventions|]]. If you've got any other questions, feel free to post a question on [[Memory Alpha:Ten Forward|Ten Forward]] or drop a line on my talk page. Once again, welcome! ~~~~