Please reply here to discuss the "Focus on help desk (4)" idea.
Topic on Talk:Growth/Discussing potential Growth ideas/2023
I think this has to be paired with any work on #1
I think the Help Desk has to be a highly visible clickable link on the page being read or edited or on a banner (could be different help desks whether in read/edit mode) taking the person to a really-simple text/chat box to ask their question or to email. Forget about Talk, etc as the new user doesn't know about it. Even the Teahouse (despite all its good intentions) is hard to use becaue it relies on the very technology the new user is already struggling with. For example, it requires source editor and does not offer a VE interface which it could trivially do (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kerry_Raymond for an example of how to offer VE on a talk page -- it really is that easy!). It does not provide a way to provide a screenshot (yeah, well, it's possible, but it is not as easy as pasting a photo into a FaceBook post). It is not clear how the user realises there is an answer waiting for them. After they have added their problem, they don't get any message telling them how the reply will appear. Will they get an email, will they have to come back and check, etc.
In arwiki, we send welcome message to all new accounts (It's annoying to some users but helpful with many other users).
We include in it this sentence:
"أخيرًا، لا تتردد في طلب المساعدة إذا ما واجهتك أي مشكلة، وذلك بطرح سؤالك على فريق المساعدة. بالتوفيق."
= "Finally, do not hesitate to ask for help if you have any problems by asking our help team. Good luck."
Then when the user open the help team page, will face a large button of "Click here to ask for help", after click in it, the user will move to this page. Note that we received several messages (questions ..etc) in this page every day, and we try to answer it as fast as we can.
Hope if we can develop what I wrote about idea 1, because it's strongly linked.
Sonds good. On sk.wiki the policy is to wait for people to make a few edits and only then post a welcome message. The rationale is that recent changes would otherwise be flooded with changes of discussion pages of users who registered automatically and will never be heard from again. Perhaps the system could be set up to send an automated welcome message after 1 edit. The other issue is, again, the availabilty of experienced editors (e.e.) to help. If the message contains links to a help page e.e. might not be flooded.
An easy way to thank IP editors might be worth a consideration.
Another point to consider is that sometimes there is too much discussion as e.e. edit and criticize the new edit(or) and the editor becomes overwhelmed at best and leaves (at worst). Who has the time to argue with e.e.?
Thank you all for weighing in on this "Focus on help desk" idea. Our team discussed all the feedback, and I've summarized it here. We're now figuring out whether to pursue this idea, and we'll be back to discuss more if we decide to work on it (please sign up for our newsletter to get updates on our plans).
A question for @Jetam2 -- do you mean that Recent Changes would be flooded because of a bot posting messages to all newbies? Is it not easy to exclude bot edits from Recent Changes?