OpenWetWare:Community development/New user experience

Jasonk 16:00, 15 June 2006 (EDT):Wikipedia has a Welcoming Committee. Basically, when a new user signed up they would get the standard email pointing them to the "Getting Started" pages, but might also get a follow up post to their user page from an existing OWW user. They would likely be much mroe comfortable shooting this person a quick question, and thus have a greater likelihood of finding the site useful/usable.... Question is what level of committment would such a welcoming committee entail.

Brad 16:47, 15 June 2006 (EDT): I think that would be enormously helpful. As a new user, I feel a little lost at times, but I also really want to contribute. I think a site like this could make a huge impact on science. I know that so many times I wish there was more detail in the Methods sections of papers that I am trying to replicate, and I think this site could offer that level of detail. However, I also think that the welcoming committee might have alot of work. Do you have any numbers about the number of new users per week vs. the number of users that might be willing to sign up for the WC? If the ratio is small enough, then it might be feasable.

Jasonk 08:58, 16 June 2006 (EDT):I'd say we are getting ~10 new users/day right now - though that number is likely inflated due to the Nature article. I don't know how many people would be willing to sign up, since we haven't been asking. I'm also not sure how much follow-up work would be required for each new user -- so its hard to peg what the overall work load on the WC would be. My thought is that we should just do a trial run of it so that we can get some data on these questions.

yeem 09:22, 16 June 2006 (EDT) Tinker with welcome for the time being. Remember to substitute it...