Welcoming new users

Question

Since the beginning of mi.yodeya 1.0, I've made it my practice to welcome new users. I'd like to make it clear that while I'm happy to continue doing this whenever I get the opportunity, anyone else who wants to is more than welcome to also do it (as some have).

Here's the pattern I usually follow:

• I wait until I see a question or answer from a new user that I think is on-topic and at all valuable. (If I'm not sure if the user is new, I click into the user profile and see if there are any prior valuable questions or answers.)

• If the content is upvote-worthy, I upvote the question or answer.

• I leave a comment on it starting with something like this, including a link to the Beginner's Guide:

  @user, [Welcome to Mi Yodeya](//judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3887), and thanks very much for the [positive adjective] question/answer!

• If the question or answer could use some improvement (e.g. adding a source), I add guidance to that effect.

• If an answer seems too much like a comment or discussion, I add something along the lines of this formula (adapted from Monica Cellio's):

  We're a little different from other sites; this isn't a discussion forum but a Q&A site, where we reserve the answer space for answers. Please check out our short [tour]. Could you please [edit] this to more directly address the question?

• If the new user is unregistered (which will apparent from the word "Unregistered" near the top of the user's /users/[number] page), I add something like:

  Please consider [registering](//judaism.stackexchange.com/users/signup-unregistered) your account, to [enable](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44557/why-should-i-register-my-account) more site features, including voting.

• If the new user apparently doesn't have a user-defined name (i.e. their username starts with "user"), I add something like:

  I suggest that you [edit your profile](//judaism.stackexchange.com/users/edit/current) and give yourself a name!

• If the user posted a question that appears to be asking for rabbinic guidance, I'll add some variation of YeZ and Shokhet's formula for that:

  Can you [edit] your question to make it less personal? We [try to avoid practical halachic questions](//judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1734). You might also want to see "[Why is it necessary to ask a rabbi?](//judaism.stackexchange.com/q/9146)" for more info.

• If there's still room in the comment, I like to encourage further exploration, with something like:

  I hope you'll look around and find other Q&A of interest, perhaps starting with our 100+ other [tag:whatever] questions.

Meta: This principle applies to meta too; we want to encourage active participation here. When a user makes a valuable meta post or comment for the first time, we should use something like the following:

@User, welcome to meta and thanks for the [positive adjective] question/answer/comment. Meta is where the community works out policy, tagging, scope, and other issues about the site, and I look forward to your contributions to those discussions.

This is more of a statement than a question, but any feedback on or suggested alterations to this practice are welcome as answers.

Answer 1

Yes! Certainly. Every advocate for Jewish Life & Learning should regularly visit the /review path for just that purpose!

https://judaism.stackexchange.com/review/

How to Review

These are the first answers a new user has ever submitted to Jewish Life and Learning.

New users may not always understand how our site works. Please review these posts and vote, comment, or flag them appropriately.

This is a great way to increase retention of new users on your site. It's not just the glowing praise or a hearty "good job" that keeps users interested in the site (although that is nice), but ANY sign that someone saw their post (question-answers, comments, acknowledgements, etc) will greatly increase the chance that that user will return to the site.

At 200 rep, a review entry appears in the top menu; at 10k rep it switches to tools. We'll be linking to /review from tools as well, probably as a pseudo-tab.

Answer 2

Background information (you can ignore this)

^{The phrase "unregistered account" sounds like an oxymoron. In truth, what is an unregistered account? Let me explain.}

^{Stack Exchange is interesting. It allows a new user to create an "unregistered" (cookie-based) account; it requires only that they provide an email address. And then they can gain badges and reputation. They can also ask and answer questions; but they can't vote until they convert their account into a "registered" (login-based) account. This system is overall probably very worthwhile. By reducing barriers to entry, it probably brings us lots of new users. But since the system occasionally fails miserably, we should indeed encourage unregistered users to register.}

A suggestion

Asking users to "please consider registering your account, which will give you access to more of the site's features" is perhaps too general. It'd be best to give one or two specific examples of features which the user can gain.

Isaac, how do you like this?:

Please consider registering your account. If you have enough reputation points, registration will allow you to cast upvotes, to cast downvotes, and more.

P.S. In general: Thank you, Isaac, for thank you for creating your "how to welcome new users" guide, and thank you for having doled out so many warm welcomes over the years!

Answer 3

I recommend that, perhaps not in an initial welcoming note, but after it is clear that a user is here for more than one post and for more than one day, the user be referred to "Where do you live?".

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Update: For even better ideas, see comments on this answer.