Growth/Communities/How to interact with newcomers

The following guide has been created to help experienced users on how to interact with new users. This document gathers findings from various places. You can learn more about those findings on Phabricator.

How to behave

 * Always be friendly, polite and patient. Even if the newcomer forgets about that.
 * Start your reply by saying "hello and welcome"!
 * Be sure that you understand the question asked. Asking for clarifications may be appropriate, and may help you provide a more accurate answer than guessing.
 * Know your limits: sometimes you won't know how to reply, especially in areas that are highly technical. Feel free to ask for help from other users who are more experienced in certain areas.
 * Be honest: if the request is not realistic or actionable on your project, or generally off-topic, say so and explain why. For example, it may not be productive for the newcomer to work on content that may be deleted in only a few days. However, explaining why the content is eligible for deletion can help the newcomer to avoid the same pitfalls in the future.
 * Coordinate with other helpers to share your experience and best practices. Be open to advice from other helpers when they offer it.
 * Newcomers may be angry or frustrated at Wikipedia because of a variety of reasons. Keep calm and try to understand their situation.
 * If it becomes clear that the discussion is going nowhere, close it politely. Consider archiving the thread early if it is likely to confuse other guests.
 * Have fun! Don't approach helping newcomers as a burden. If you don't have time to follow through with a request, or just aren't in the mood, then let another helper handle the request instead.
 * Take care of the other people who reply with you. Operating a dedicated help forum is a collective project, and depends on a wide range of helpers, who each have their individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as available time and energy.

How to reply

 * Leave replies with actionable content.
 * Don't point to documentation first, explain the process instead. An answer is better than link to the answer. Quote important information from other pages you link, to avoid forcing people to read multiple long pages.
 * Reply to questions asked, because they are specific - avoid general replies. Provide examples.
 * Keep things simple, avoid jargon and acronyms (or introduce it progressively by linking to it). Avoid overloading the newcomer with information not directly related to their question.
 * Be a guide: if someone wants to add an image on a new article, but the action that person should take first is to add sources, tell them to add sources first (and how to) and promise that you will explain how to add an image later.
 * Pay attention to how you reply, check your spelling. Avoid
 * Make sure the newcomer is aware of the reply by pinging them. If possible, follow up on the request by checking back later: the newcomer may ask about something else, or need further clarification. They may not intuitively understand when or how to use the ping template to reply.
 * If possible, respond in a timely manner, or defer to other people's responses if you are unavailable. Newcomer many not log in often, may not have email notifications enabled, and may not be accustomed to a community like Wikipedia, where discussions can often last days or weeks, and involve users from many time zones.

Explain or do the change myself?
One of the goals is to help newcomers who struggle with the interface and markup. It may sometimes be easier to make very complicated edits yourself instead of explaining how to do so, especially concerning multi-step processes and complex syntax. Be honest and tell the newcomer that it is complicated "even for an experienced user", but explain the steps you've been through so that the newcomer can learn and reproduce them afterwards.

Make your choice based on your own experience and your discussions with other helpers. But don't forget that it is often more rewarding for a newcomer to understand what to do and apply it themselves, rather than having it done for them. Teaching is less efficient in the short-term, but increases editor-retention in the long-term.

Examples
Here are some hypothetical examples based on common replies.

How can I add an image to an article?


 * ❌ Check on the help page where you will be guided.
 * ✅ Hello! Wikipedia can be reused by anyone, so we can't accept every image. It depends on the topic and who owns that image. Which article do you want to illustrate? Are you the author of the image you want to use? Thank you!

My article has been deleted and that's scandalous!


 * ❌ That's your fault: you should have read the help pages first. Now you know that you can't do everything you want on Wikipedia, especially trying to promote the topic you've chosen.
 * ✅ Hello and sorry for the bad experience you had. Based on the information avaialable, it seems that your article didn't include any sources. Wikipedia articles are based on published sources, so that readers can verify the information. That's the most important issue. I've tried to check if some sources exist about the topic you've chosen and I haven't found any. Do you have sources we can use? If there are no such sources available, then it may be too soon for Wikipedia to have an article on this subject.