Who we are
The welcoming committee is an informal group of Wikipedians who greet new users and help them get started. Members of the Welcoming Committee should be especially careful not to bite the newcomers, but other than that there are no requirements for joining us, and no responsibilities. However, many of us are willing to spread the odd wing, and devote a little time to mentoring on an as needed informal basis.
If you want to talk about how Wikipedia treats its newest members, this is a good place: Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee. This is as good a place as any to note that Wikipedia has different 'Name Spaces', or equivalently, database catagorized spaces. 'Wikipedia' prefixed spaces are where we administer or talk about administering Wikipedia itself. There are other spaces, see your preferences tab, and look at how you can define 'Searching' in the list by checking some of these or unchecking some. Special pages also allow you to select looking at just one set among the many you may find yourself working and posting too someday.
What we do
The tradition of posting greetings for newcomers long pre-dates the name "welcoming committee", and all Wikipedians should be friendly and helpful to new users. We're just a group of people who see that as part of our work here. We also work on projects to make Wikipedia easier for new users.
The welcoming committee created the Wikipedia:Tutorial as a one-stop place to get basic information about contributing. See its talk page and the welcoming committee talk page for more discussion. Also, feel free to make changes there if you see something that could be improved.
We also created a place for new users to introduce themselves, at the new user log. You might want to suggest in your greetings that new users sign this log, so the community can meet them. If you're interested in interacting with newcomers, you can watchlist the new user log, or at least look at it periodically. It's nice if we respond to what they post there, especially if we can point them to pages or projects they'll be interested in.
We also help maintain pages like Welcome, newcomers and the various FAQs. This page gives a place to discuss how the entire system works, not just how individual pages can change.
For quick welcomes, you can use {{welcome}}, or your own version of that template. If you do, use {{subst:welcome}}, not just {{welcome}}. Remember that doing this is less personal; it's a bit like handing someone a brochure instead of talking to them. As an alternative, you can use a cut-and-paste greeting, like this one. That way you can avoid retyping generic text, but you can easily add a sentence or two that personalize it for the specific user you're greeting.
The greetings messages should be placed on the user's talk page, not their user page, so that they will get the "You have new messages" box.
For anonymous IPs that you would like to suggest they get a user name, you can use either {{welcome-anon-from}} (which requires your user name as a parameter) or {{welcome-anon}}. There is also {{anon}}, but this focuses very heavily on the issue of getting an account so it may require an additional, more general welcome.
For more information on other greetings, see Wikipedia:Standard user greeting and Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace
How you can help
If you want to help out, the most obvious thing you can do is post welcome messages, and be friendly and helpful with new users you meet. You can look over any of the tutorials, welcome pages, or FAQs and make or suggest improvements. You can also help us maintain the Wikipedia:Help desk, where new users ask questions. If you want to be part of any discussions that come up here, you can watchlist this page.
It's best to check a new user's contributions before welcoming them. Compliment them and thank them for the work they've done! You'll sometimes find that they're not new at all, but simply have a blank Talk page (in which case you might still welcome them, but with a note apologizing for the lateness), or that they are new, but have done nothing but vandalise articles (in which case, depending upon the seriousness of their vandalism, you might add a welcome and a warning, or just add a warning).
Members
Our list of members was getting quite long. If you want to see who we are, or add yourself to our noble ranks, check out Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/members.
The Public Enemy
