Template talk:Welcomelaws

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This template is in the collection of greetings templates maintained by the Welcoming Committee. For other templates in the collection, see Welcome templates.

[edit] Rationale

This template summarizes WP tenets in addition to providing facilitative links. The other templates lean too far in facilitating the newcomer to edit Wikipedia and Be Bold, which is all very well, but it may be beneficial to emphasise the tenets that govern such editing. ImpuMozhi 14:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Three-tilde error

There's a small error, the current template encourages to " sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~ ", but:

• Policy is to sign with date (four tildes) on talk pages
• Same for "votes" on AFDs

So, that's at least a first point to amend, I think. Furthermore:

• Actually, four tildes are required practically everywhere, except where the page specifically ask otherwise in bold.
• And thus that seems to me to be information overload for a welcome template, the user isn't going to go into special vote pages before a while.

So, my second suggestion would be to removed the "three-tilde" concept entirely from the welcome template. The rare places that prohibit them warn against it in bold, anyway. Maybe something more like this:

By the way, when discussing with other wikipedians, please remember to sign your messages on Talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~ (the software will replace them with your name and the current date). Again, welcome!

-- 62.147.37.195 12:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)