Welcome messages - a suggestion

Why do we have to clutter this forum with welcome messages, especially when the user being welcomed hasn't even logged in for some considerable time.

I almost exclusively use the 'New Posts' method of viewing posts and I find it very frustrating when another member has logged in purely to create a whole raft of welcome messages bringing old posts back into the new posts category.

A number of members only seem to login to post welcome messages by the bucket load.

My suggestion is to post welcome messages in the users gallery, thus removing them from otherwise interesting topics.

Another suggestion to those users that log in only to welcome newcomers is:- "Please log in more frequently and welcome fewer new users at one sitting", then we won't get so many old posts as new.

Rant over.

Totally agree with you Peter, I mostly use the 'Recent Activity' method, sometimes I pop in to find most of the whole page taken up with 'copy & paste' welcome messages. Why oh why?

Excellent idea, Peter.
Let welcome messages be excluded from the 'recent activity' postings.

Yes Yes Yes Peter. I never welcome anyone - not because I am a GOM, it's good to see new people joining, but because I don't like the idea of using those sort of posts to build up my 'click count'. One of my original reasons for suggesting that 'Post Numbers' should be dropped was precisely this - and the way I think they can intimidate new members.

Can't we just get rid of this silly category?

It's a complete waste of time. Sort of thing you'd find in a nursery school, or on an American forum.

G

Well the idea is nice I suppose, give newcomers a chance to say hello and who they are. It was actually quite heavily asked for at the time.

There aren't that many new posts per day in there as a rule, but if you don't want to read then just click "mark all as read" at the top of the section and all the green alerts will disappear.

I remember when someone (Gwyn?) suggested we create the welcome section and we all thought it was a great idea!

As I go through sections by interest and not via the "recent posts" route I don't see these pages of welcome messages so it has never bothered me. And since when has being polite been the preserve of nursery schools and Americans? Although come to think of it, most Americans are very polite.

K.

Guilty m'lud .

I don't welcome everyone I admit.

When people do a mass greet I just skip those postings, as I do others which don't appeal, when I click recent activity. If I read them all I'd probably never get anything else done.

Like Peter I sometimes get annoyed by a pageful of 'me too' type replies (or a row of smilies) in the recent posts section.
But I don't fins it too difficult scrolling past them, & sometimes these replys catch my eye as they answer a Newbies query in a way that makes them interetsing.

I have to admit I hardly ever look at the welcome section & didn't post there when I first joined. (I think I got round to it a few weeks later) I try to welcome new users when replying to their posts or commenting on their portfolio pictures, but I generally feel I have nothing useful to add if it's just a 'Hi I'm new' message.

I'd second Peter's suggestion that the ideal answer is for members to log on more often (welcoming a few more often) - but I can see why it's not always practical. Perhaps just limiting their replys to the most recent Newbies would assist (but I doubt those who log in rarely will see such a suggestion)

I'm one of the people that thought that having the just-joined section was a good idea. Before we had it welcoming messages were being scattered all over the site which I found a bit of a frustration.

I tend to only dip into certain sections, for example I don't look in the Film section at all. This means of course that for me the recent-message list is not quite so useful and I have to admit that I don't use it. It does mean though that it is very easy for me to choose not to bother with the just-joined section.

I guess it all depends on the host site software but I wonder if it might just be possible to exclude messages in the just-joined section from the recent-message list.

Glyn

You're quite right that Americans are generally very polite. It's sincerity that I sometimes feel is lacking.

I don't feel that a load of people saying "Hi, welcome to the forum" adds anything. Gwyn's idea was to get these vacuous messages out of the main arena, which was a good plan. The problem is that they clog up the Recent Messages page, especially when some people feel inspired to write "Hi, welcome to the forum" twenty times.

So why don't we automatically lock each thread after the initial introductory message, and consign "Hi, welcome to the forum" to the dustbin where it belongs.

G

Perhaps we should keep the Just Joined section but only allow the moderators to post welcome messages to it.

Have a nice day

Good idea. We can have a robot Mod to automatically add "Hi, welcome to the forum".

G

I was thinking more on the lines of making you the "welcome to the forum mod" George

Is it really that hard to ignore these posts and just click onto page 2 of the recent messages? A small price to pay for this sort of well-meant amiability in my view