Extension:HAWelcome

Highly Automated Welcome Tool (HAWelcome) extension automatically welcomes new users — anons and registered ones, depending on the extension's configuration — after their first edit.

The extension was originally written by Krzysztof Krzyżaniak and Maciej Błaszkowski for Wikia and subsequently forked by Jack Phoenix for ShoutWiki and by wikiHow developers for wikiHow. This page documents the ShoutWiki version, which is as of October 2017 the definitive version of the extension guaranteed to work with modern versions of MediaWiki (Wikia uses a highly customized version of MediaWiki based on 1.19 so their version does not work out-of-the-box with +, but you can check out their GitHub if you're interested in the source code of their version of HAWelcome).

Configuration
HAWelcome has three configuration variables that go in LocalSettings.php. There is also configuration on-wiki.

LocalSettings.php

 * - This configuration variable contains the name of the user that should leave the welcome message. If this user is flagged as a bot, the edits will be marked as a bot edit. For compatibility with ShoutWiki's setup, the default value is ShoutWiki.
 * - The name of the group that can serve as a fallback when no sysops have been active in the last 60 days. This is the staff group by default.
 * - This configuration variable toggles if the signature of the welcomer should be the one they have set in their preferences. This is false by default, and messages will use the default signature.

On-wiki
HAWelcome adds two new configuration messages:
 * welcome-user - Determines of which user the signature should be placed under the welcome message. This can be a username or any of the special values:
 * - The most recently active sysop, with no fallback on staff
 * - The most recently active sysop or staff when no sysops have been active in 60 days
 * - Don't leave welcome messages. In addition to, the message content may also be set to a single dash (-)
 * welcome-enabled - Determines which action to perform. It can be any combination of the following:
 * page-user - Create a user page for a registered user. The content of the user page is controlled by the message welcome-user-page
 * message-anon - Leave welcome messages for anonymous users. The content of the message is controlled by the message welcome-message-anon
 * message-user - Leave welcome messages for registered users. The content of the message is controlled by the message welcome-message-user
 * board-welcome - Leave a welcome message on the UserBoard. The content of the message is controlled by the message user-board-welcome-message

User rights
There is one user right, assigned to the groups bot, staff, sysop and bureaucrat by default:. Users with this right will not receive a message or have their user page created when they make their first edit.

Compatibility
HAWelcome integrates with SocialProfile in two ways:
 * If the user has opted to use the social profile, the user page will be created in the UserWiki: namespace, rather than the User: namespace.
 * (From Automatic Board Welcome) A message can be left on the UserBoard if this is enabled.

Known limitations

 * Structured Discussions and LiquidThreads are not supported. No welcome message will be left on the talk page of users with a Structured Discussions or LiquidThreads talk page.