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Welcoming New Members

Now that Mibba has two new admins (kakariki.angel and katie mosing), we've been able to get a lot more projects on Mibba started. From launching site beta readers to the contest revival program, Mibba's staff and many Mibbians have been really busy. Now we're working on an idea (or set of ideas) that have brewing in Mibba's Suggestion forum for some time. It's an idea quite a few Mibbians seem to be really interested in implementing. In fact, it's so popular there are three threads that discuss possible options to seeing this through.

The General Idea

With lots of members on Mibba and many new members joining Mibba every day, Mibba can often be an overwhelming place for new users. Currently, when new users join the site, they don't get much by way of a formal introduction to the site. There are so many helpful threads, articles, and sections of the site many Mibbians never see because they don't know where they are or who to turn to. Mibbians would like to change this by introducing a "Welcoming" system.

Right now, there are a few ideas on the table of how a "Welcoming" system could work here on Mibba, including a Committee to personally welcome new members or the addition of a more welcoming and informative e-mails or PMs for new members. Some Mibbians have even formed a Welcoming Committee to help usher in new users to Mibba life. As we move forward, we would like to set up a more official and easy to implement system that will ensure that all new Mibbians receive access to all the info they need about Mibba, as well as receive a warm welcome to the site from its users.

Working Things Out

Before we can make a move on anything, we (the admins) have been trying to narrow down the ideas Mibbians have put forward and work it into one cohesive idea we can act on to really get this thing going. There's a lot about the ideas that have been put forward we really like but we need to make sure we have a system that'll run (relatively) smoothly and make sure all new members are reached and given the correct information. Nicole, Katie, and I have been brainstorming and tweaking some of the ideas and here's a few suggestions we think will be do-able.

1. Welcoming Committee Structure

One idea was to add a welcoming committee as staff to Mibba. This would mean they had official duties and aresponsibility to welcome new members to the site. It would be a 'job' - so to speak - which means there would be much stricter guidelines to what they did, how they did, and how often it was done. As members of the staff, they would need to have a more structured operation and make sure everyone was always working.

Having the welcoming committee work as a thread was also an option. This is the idea that's currently the most favorable among the admins. It simply calls for a thread where Mibbians (any Mibbians willing to help out) can "claim" new Mibbians and just send them a message introducing them to the site, make a few recommendations to things they can read, and offer some tips and tricks to navigating Mibba. We like this idea best because it's much more casual, friendly, and just warmer. Also, it's not limiting to who can join and there's no commitment to be broken. If you have time to do it this week, you can help out, and if you're really busy next week, you won't have to. It'll be open to all friendly Mibbians at any time.

2. Welcoming Message Template

With whichever option we go with, we'd need to decide on how we'd do the messaging. Since a big part of this would entail making sure new Mibbians get important 'insider' Mibbian info (like links to the Knowledge Base and other important parts of Mibba), we realized we'd need to have at least one stock message all welcomers would use. But aside from that, we'd like each welcomer to help introduce the new Mibbians in their own way by pointing out thread and portions of the site they personally enjoy and even recommending stories or poems new users can read to get started. Some issues we encountered with this were members possibly using this as an opportunity to only push their stories or poems onto new Mibbians, rather than thinking of ways to expose the new users to a variety of things on the site.

We also considered going with a more structured through and through welcoming message welcomers initially send out with all the important information and maybe we have a list of stories/poems all new members are linked to (we'll change this list of stories weekly). With this, we'll be able to make sure there's a greater variety of stories/poem/threads being introduced to the new users rather than just depend on the welcomer's preferences. We also thought to include links to the forum's rec' threads and the magazine's rec' pages.

3. Official "Welcome to the Site" PM or E-mail

Another idea put forth was for Mibba to send out an official "Welcome to Mibba" PM or e-mail. This would include all the informative Mibba stuff but it would lack the personal touch. While this option would be the most convenient and possibly easier to implement, it may not come off as very welcoming and the new users won't get the chance to start off on the site with a real person who can say "Hey! Just let me know if you need anything." This approach might work well in addition to one of the other options.

As you can see, this project is still has a lot more planning to go through before it's ready to launch. We're hoping to get something worked out over the next couple of weeks and start working with the Welcoming Committee to get this implemented, but we'd like to keep you informed on how our projects are going. We've got a lot more brainstorming and tweaking to go so if you have any more ideas on how we can keep improving this idea, we'd love to hear it.