Encouraging new user participation while critiquing their first posts

Question

I have seen this scenario play out a few times where a new user kind of understands the idea and wants to participate, but doesn't understand the site rules or hasn't read them yet. Because of this and their desire to participate they post a lot in a short period.

While some of their posts are fine, others either break or don't quite follow the rules of the site. How can I encourage a user to keep using the site while also saying at the same time some of their posts need to be revised or removed?

Answer 1

Communication

In my experience, a new user that is bursting with participation soon after they join is very receptive to feedback, with the cavaet that the feedback must be plain, visible, and friendly to them.

If you take the initiative to open a line of communication with the user, you will be better served by doing so in a way that they will be notified that they have been communicated with. If your platform supports private messages or something comparable that will notify the user, these are usually the most direct means of communication.

While attentive, these users can also be fragile and unwelcoming to feedback that isn't construed as helpful or friendly. Make sure to have a friendly demeanor when constructing your message -- otherwise, your help may be ignored or resented.

Salvaging Content

It sounds like the user in question isn't a totally lost cause, which is good. When constructing a message to address your user, you will want to be able to reference the user's content that needs work, and offer helpful steps to improving that content.

Tips:

• If your platform has help pages, or a help-themed forum, be sure to link to them.
• If editing content isn't necessarily easy or straightforward, you may want to offer guidance on this as well. Many woes of new users are caused by taking the first steps towards learning how to use a new platform.
• Link to examples of good content that are related to what the user is trying to convey or express. We tend to emulate "good content" after we learn what "good content" is.

Continued Discussion

This is a very personal and one-on-one way of mentoring a new community member. Some communities have it so ingrained in their culture that they have templates for this sort of thing... Wikipedia is a good example: if you've ever made a first edit, it will likely have been followed up by a templatized welcome message by an established user.

You may need to be available to discuss or continue a line of communication with this user -- they may have additional questions. If you can't be available to do this, don't be afraid to invite other community members to welcome and mentor the user.

Answer 2

I just use a very welcoming attitude, explaining everything I do and why. I see it as an onboarding process - so on Software Recommendations, where we do quite a lot of deleting new user's answers, I leave a comment along the lines of:

Welcome to SR! I'm going to have to delete this because it doesn't follow <link to site guidelines - please, feel free to create a new answer (or [edit] this one) to incorperate the answer guidelines. For example, <list of questions for them to answer to make their answer better>. Again, welcome!

Usually I'm fairly lazy and use a template comment that I've tuned to fit most cases, but I try to (and really should) use a special comment for each scenario. This, I believe, helps the user feel welcome. You'd be surprised at how many 'converts' we have that learn the rules and turn out to be great contributers.

Essentially, just be nice, be honest, and assume they mean well.

Answer 3

Be nice and constructive!

The user should not see you as the evil moderator who wants to spoil all the fun. If the community supports it: Send a private message welcoming the user, talking about the issues (and referring to the rules) and telling them that you are willing to help him in case any questions about the community's culture arise.

Answer 4

Other existing answers including this one and this one best provide a proper approach to the situation described in the OP. Nonetheless, this answer tries to look at the matter from a more radical point of view. Accordingly, the following points are offered.

• If members of a community, especially new ones, are supposed to follow certain norms, there should be in advance a set of community guidelines characterized as follows. Guidelines should be thorough, clear, and consistent enough that one can reasonably expect members to behave as desired. Firstly, it should not presumed that some norms need not be included in the guidelines since community members are smart and share the same common sense; if such norms, even obvious ones, are necessary to be followed, they should be included in the guidelines. Secondly, guidelines should be expressed in simple and unambiguous language; neither is the realm of guidelines a proper place to show off ornate writing skills, nor are community members lawyers to comprehend legal language. (Particularly, online communities should always presume that their members are ordinary people of different languages and cultures.) If a guideline is ambiguous, violation of some intended interpretation of it would not amount to violation of the guideline, as some other interpretation might be claimed to have adopted. Also, guidelines should be stated as directly and literally as possible. Furthermore, it is highly recommended to illustrate guidelines by concrete examples. Finally, guidelines should be conspicuous; community members should not have to explore for them throughout the community.
• The guidelines should be considered sacred by all members of the community, be they good or bad (Bad guidelines can be improved at any time, but until then they should be respected and followed by all). If members of a community, especially new ones, see that some part of the existing guidelines has been violated by some members with no objection issued, they will likely feel that the whole set of guidelines are not serious and important enough to be undoubtedly followed.
• As explained in the previous point, all community members must follow the written guidelines, and anyone, being new or experienced, should be treated in accordance with the existing guidelines in case of violation of them. It should be noted that encouragement and criticism should not be considered incompatible; both the components are essential for a community to thrive. However, very often people, even experienced members, have a negative attitude toward being criticized. That is in fact due to some spiritual root of human beings---although criticism is far more helpful to one than encouragement. One should not expect to (and cannot) change such an entrenched attitude; however, it can be a good practice to talk about/discuss it sometimes within the community, so that some improvement can be hoped for.