How to get more new members to introduce thereselves

[TracyP]

I just had a thought. Yeah, I know, That is scary in itself. Really though the thought was this. I am on here a lot at night and off and on during the day. My thought was to try and monitor new member welcomes in the stats section on the right side of the page. When I see a new member I would send a PM that reads something like the following. The idea is to try and get more new members to introduce themselves. This may help to also prevent the spammers we have seen in the past few days. Here is the template that I typed up in word. What do you think? I will take this responsibility on myself and will alert the moderators if there will be an extended absence from me. I will not catch all of the new members but a good number will be PM'ed.


Welcome to North Carolina Woodworkers. It is so good to have you. Would you please take a moment and go to the who we are forum and introduce yourself to the group. If no one has told you yet, we love to see pictures of projects, family, tools, etc. As long as they are clean and family friendly. You will find a wealth of invaluable information here as well as make some neat friends. And again thank you for joining. Feel free to jump in to the discussions at any time. Be assured that you will be welcomed and wanted here. For more information about us please read the site policies.

 

[DaveO]

New member do get an automated message similar to what you are suggesting when they register. Urging them to give an intro in the Who We Are forum and to follow the site's policies on posting etiquette.
I used to send a personal PM welcome message to new members until it became too much to handle. Many were warmly received, others just ignored.
Anything you want to do to welcome new members to the site is great and I applaud the effort.
When I first joined I actually got a phone call from Steve to help me with my registration problems. That personal effort meant more to me than any automated welcome message I might have got. Someone really cared if I was able to join the site. It's all Steve's fault that I am the member I am today:gar-La;:gar-La;


Dave

 

[sapwood]

Tracy,
I think it's great you have taken the initiative and the idea is a good one. In the past, staff have periodically (read irregularly) posted a thread inviting folks to introduce themselves and/or post a pix in Faces of NCWoodworker. No one has done that in a quite a while, though we frequently remind folks to intro themselves when making their first post.

It would be necessary to ensure the member has completed registration before messaging.

My $.0002,
Roger