User:Haukurth/Welcome experiment

A Welcome Experiment: Greet a dozen new users with the standard Template:Welcome and another dozen with a custom template. The two groups should be selected in an identical manner. After a suitable amount of time measure the edit count of both groups and calculate the median. If one group has a significantly higher median edit count that might indicate that they've received a more useful template. Clearly the sample is too small. Originally I'd intended to do more welcomes but this is quite time consuming and boring.

All welcomed users have made one or more non-vandalism edit before being welcomed.

Result: After one day three of those users have shown some positive activity after getting welcomed; two from the first group  and one from the second group. . Clearly the sample was far too small to yield any meaningful result. Nevertheless I think the idea of empirical experiments for this sort of thing is worthwhile.

Group 1
Text: Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Haukur 22:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC) Edit summary: Welcome!
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

Group 2
Text: I saw you've just started an account here and would like to welcome you and give you some unsolicited advice :-)

The most important thing is not to worry about getting things wrong. As a beginner it's best to dive right in and start editing articles on your favorite subjects. Don't get bogged down in style guides or policies - just do what other people seem to be doing and what seems sensible to you - you'll pick things up as you go along.

If you need any help feel free to ask me a question by editing my talk page. I've been here a couple of years and I'm an "admin" so I can probably help you out if you run into difficulty. Haukur 22:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC) Edit summary: Ignore the rules :)