Hard Light Productions Forums
Announcements => Announcements => Topic started by: Goober5000 on May 16, 2007, 01:36:03 pm
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I'm getting a little tired of the way the welcome beam and the welcome speech are being abused. They used to be a friendly way to welcome newbies; now they're just a moronic way for immature forumites to inflate their post count. I get the distinct impression that most of the serial welcomers care too little about the person being welcomed and too much about the complexity of their welcome speech and the number of times they've posted a welcome first.
It's also undoubtedly annoying for the first-time posters. When I see a thread consisting of a question, five welcomes, and no answers, I can't help but think the newbie will get the impression that we're all show and no substance. Welcome speeches may make us appear friendly, but it's content and answers that will convince people to stay.
So I'm going to start cracking down on abuses of the welcome beam. If your welcome speech is too long, your post may get deleted. If you commit a serious infraction -- like if your post consists of four welcome beams and three paragraphs of text -- you may get temporarily banned.
As a rule of thumb, your welcome speech should not be longer than your substantive reply to whatever the thread is about. It certainly shouldn't be the only thing in your post, especially if the newbie's question hasn't been answered yet. The only exception is when a newbie posts a pure "hi, I'm new here" thread, with no problems or questions. If he has problems or questions, he deserves an answer.
Many of the moderators, such as karajorma and Taristin, share a similar opinion, so I imagine they'll start doing the same. Consider this newspost a statement of intent -- more than a regular post, but less than a change in policy. :)
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Yay! That whole thing was kind of getting to me too. Seeing about half a page of welcomes and maybe one answer.
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:yes: :yes:
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Ok, got it... :)
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Good, I keep thinking about the time when I was new here and had questions. I got a welcome, then an answer. Now it just seems like it's all welcomes, no substance. It's got to be tough and offensive to a new guy to get welcomed, then have no one care enough to answer their questions.
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about time too...
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Good move on this. I think the beam itself is fine, but the subsequent speech is getting increasingly tiresome.
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The beam is fine when used properly. First person who is actually posting a useful reply uses the beam.
The problem is when being the person who used the beam becomes more important than actually welcoming the person.
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The beam is fine when used properly. First person who is actually posting a useful reply uses the beam.
The problem is when being the person who used the beam becomes more important than actually welcoming the person.
It's becoming just like Slashdot's "First Post".
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Just go back to "Welcome to HLP. Exits are to the rear and left, in case of an emergency, shotguns are located under the seats."
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like if your post consists of four welcome beams and three paragraphs of text -- you may get temporarily banned.
... (ashamed)
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so its like
:welcome:
hello Freespace 2 lover/newb who wants to learn to mod/develop freespace2_open
Our current version of Freespace2_open is 3.*.*
If you need help please do not hesitate to ask our friendly admins
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Goober i have to say, i'm inclined to agree with you on this one. 6 months back i admit i was caught up in the whole "gotta be the first to tag a noob" atmosphere. Looking back since my return i can see how frustrating it would be for someone looking for a genuine answer only to recieve up to seven welcomes.
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So is this okay if I answer their question? It's a bit lengthy I guess but I always try to at least offer them a little bit of direction.
:welcome:
Welcome to Hard Light Productions! Here are the minor offenses, and their corresponding punishments! Never comined "F", "S", or "3" in a thread! This minor offense is usually combated by the use of our standardized Flame-throwers! But, due to budget problems and a few legal concerns (lawyers don't like clients charred to their bones), there is no longer napal in the flame thrower, but rather holy water! Another major offense is disturbing our little buddy (hey! That was my lunch!) called Carl, the resident Shivan who has taken a fancy to living in our walls! Throw him your lunch, and you should be fine... But if you happen to be caught in the wall with Carl, simply take the emergancy saw, and cut off a few limbs! Carl should stop persuit, but if he doesnt... you're on your own! If you wish to leave HLP, simply walk to the back of the ship, and operate the airlocks! The only problem with that choices is the airlocks no longer work! You may check-out any time you wish, but you many not leave HLP! If you should have any concerns, simply walk to the bridge and open up the weapons locker. Inside is your standard AK-47 and Plasma Rifle! However, most of us have a bit of a hard time getting in, as only moderators, the hyper-intelligent shade of blue, and have keys in! If you are a bit weary of staying on HLP, simply blow through the airlock and try to make your way over to the Game-Warden sister-station. Be careful, though! We are out of space suits, and I hear space doesn't have much oxygen... or much of anything! Good luck and enjoy your stay!
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If you feel you have to ask, then maybe it needs to be trimmed down a bit?
Honestly, I always found the whole thing a little silly...
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You have my utmost apologies for welcoming new-comers to this wonderful forum! :P
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The beam is fine when used properly. First person who is actually posting a useful reply uses the beam.
The problem is when being the person who used the beam becomes more important than actually welcoming the person.
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It's best not to offer generic help, most people post on a few boards, and know the general stuff when they come here, and a lot of people just find that large blocks of text like that will get skipped anyway, I severely doubt many newbs actually sit down and read the welcome speech.
I've never made my apathy toward the welcome beam a secret though personally, I still would have gone with the changing the text on the beam to 'I'm Annoying!', would have done just as good a job, and given us a laugh with it ;)
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so its like
:welcome:
hello Freespace 2 lover/newb who wants to learn to mod/develop freespace2_open
Our current version of Freespace2_open is 3.*.*
If you need help please do not hesitate to ask our friendly admins
You're giving for sure that a noob doesn't even have FS Open. Read Admiral Koth registered more than one year ago and posted for the first time only a few months ago(he created a thread about a FS Open error). A Welcome SpeechTM should be about something else...
It's best not to offer generic help, most people post on a few boards, and know the general stuff when they come here, and a lot of people just find that large blocks of text like that will get skipped anyway, I severely doubt many newbs actually sit down and read the welcome speech.
I've never made my apathy toward the welcome beam a secret though personally, I still would have gone with the changing the text on the beam to 'I'm Annoying!', would have done just as good a job, and given us a laugh with it ;)
I use a trick :P
You have my utmost apologies for welcoming new-comers to this wonderful forum! :P
I still remember your "I stopped LGM's evil plan" :P
Anyways...
We need a chat of some sort, using which we can solve problems in an easier way....without creating threads.
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Yay, three cheers for Goob!
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Anyways...
We need a chat of some sort, using which we can solve problems in an easier way....without creating threads.
It's called "Official HLP IRC Channel" :p
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So is this okay if I answer their question? It's a bit lengthy I guess but I always try to at least offer them a little bit of direction.
I'd say it's ridiculously over long and is full of in-jokes you probably don't understand yourself.
If you want to make this place more welcoming for newbies try actually answering their questions. It's not really that hard and you can give pretty good advice for a large majority of the problems if you just study what the others are saying.
Hell, just spotting that a newbie hasn't given useful information like their computer specs when describing a graphics problem or asking if they have installed the latest version of OpenAL (Preferably with a link) is about a hundred times more useful than the majority of the welcoming speeches I see.
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About damn time IMO.
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The new welcome message. :p
(http://www.hard-light.net/forums/Smileys/HLP/welcome2hlpbb.gif)
Yo noob, welcome to HLP.
*WARNING* repeat this message and you will get banned.
I guess I'm the only one who likes the oversized welcome message. For one it changes with the person and gives a few laughs and shows them old memories. Secondly, a little humor distracts them from the smell of death that fills this boring, dull place. :p
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I think people are missing the point, here. There's nothing wrong with a creative welcome message (as long as it's not ridiculously long), but one should not post just to "beam" a newcomer unless it's in a basic "Hi, I'm new here" kind of topic:
If they are asking a question or need help with some problem (and many newcomers do), the main priority is to make them feel welcome by answering the question or solving their problem - Only after that should you worry about the welcome beam and associated message. Barraging them with posts that are essentially useless when they came here seeking help has the exact opposite effect of a welcome - It may garner a few laughs and bring out old memories for you, but remember that a welcome post should not be for your benefit, but for the benefit of the newcomer, and asking a question only to get beamed 5 times with no answer is not very welcoming.
Needless to say, considering what I just wrote, I definitely support this.
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I think people are missing the point, here. There's nothing wrong with a creative welcome message (as long as it's not ridiculously long), but one should not post just to "beam" a newcomer unless it's in a basic "Hi, I'm new here" kind of topic:
If they are asking a question or need help with some problem (and many newcomers do), the main priority is to make them feel welcome by answering the question or solving their problem - Only after that should you worry about the welcome beam and associated message. Barraging them with posts that are essentially useless when they came here seeking help has the exact opposite effect of a welcome - It may garner a few laughs and bring out old memories for you, but remember that a welcome post should not be for your benefit, but for the benefit of the newcomer, and asking a question only to get beamed 5 times with no answer is not very welcoming.
Needless to say, considering what I just wrote, I definitely support this.
Well the only problem with that is name 5 people who know enough about SCP to answer a noob's question and post regularly, and you can't use Kara or Taylor.
Secondly, yes it may be slightly annoying to have a bunch of welcomes, but I have seen many times where someone would post a question and it would be a week or so later before it got one response either because of it being pulled down the list and no one seeing it, or the few who know anything can't get on for a while. And that would be far more annoying.
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I think people are missing the point, here. There's nothing wrong with a creative welcome message (as long as it's not ridiculously long)
But is the current welcome speech creative? Not really. It's the same jokes dragged out and given a somewhat mouldy coat of new paint as if that will make it new.
Well the only problem with that is name 5 people who know enough about SCP to answer a noob's question and post regularly, and you can't use Kara or Taylor.
Thing is that about 80% of newbie problems are very simple to diagnose. The people who have been posting all these welcome beams should have read enough newbie topics by now to know that the leading cause of the game not starting is a lack of OpenAL. Or that running in D3D causes graphical glitches.
I learned a large portion of what I know about troubleshooting by simply remembering which solution went with which problem. Yes I have a good technical knowledge of how FS2_Open works to back that up but I find that a large percentage of the time I'm simply going on memory of past help requests. And that's something anyone can do.
Secondly, yes it may be slightly annoying to have a bunch of welcomes, but I have seen many times where someone would post a question and it would be a week or so later before it got one response either because of it being pulled down the list and no one seeing it, or the few who know anything can't get on for a while. And that would be far more annoying.
I don't know. No responses at all can be that no one noticed the question/no one cares/no one knows. Once you add the welcome beam most people will figure that the thread was noticed. Which means that they're more likely to think it's just that no one cares.
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While I admit to being one of the few who do abuse the welcome beam (and speech although, not as often as I can't be bothered writing my own most of the time) I do try to help if there is a problem and I have an idea of the solution. But sometimes giving the wrong advice can do more harm than good, but by welcoming the newb I have bumped their message that it may become noticeable those such as yourselves Karajorma and Goober who do know what they are talking about. (In fact many a time I have put in that onw of you would be along shortly to help resolve the newbies problem) ;)
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How's this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39765.msg960483.html#msg960483)?
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Useless.
I wish people would realise that the welcome speech thing is over. It's too far past its best before date to be worth saving. It's actually a bigger annoyance to me than people asking about FS3. At least that is a legitimate question asked by someone who doesn't know the answer.
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how about something like this.
(http://www.hard-light.net/forums/Smileys/HLP/welcome2hlpbb.gif)
Welcome to HLP Freespace open source code Projects. We are glad to have you aboard, and any questions you have concerning anything on the game will be answered by, either Admins or every other person that is capable of answering. Enjoy your stay and have fun :).
Any good?
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One problem:
will be answered by[here],[/here] either Admins or every other person that is capable of answering.
Comma splice, get rid of that comma.
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Do you really need any welcome speech at all? The welcome beam alone is sufficient as far as a welcoming goes. Rest of the post should be relevant to the topic, not a welcome speech even if it is a short one.
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Yes. It adds warm & welcoming atmosphere. It's one thing I liked seeing on HLP before I joined. :p Any others feel the same? BTW, the (legitimate) reason ppl should be giving welcome beam & speech is to welcome people. ie, if you can't help, let the new user know that they are not being ignored, and that help is on the way, but unfortunately you don't have the answer (yet). If a new user sees ppl looking through their help post, and no one responds because they don't know the answer, it could appear as if they were being ignored or considered not important enough to warrant an answer. Make any sense? That's the only thing I'm worried about. Just as long as the welcomer states that help is on the way... a welcome should be a good thing. IDK, but that's how I feel.
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But why a formal, repeated welcome speech?
We're not robots. We supposedly have brains. Use them. Write something appropriate to what the user said.
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Aww, work? It's easier to plagiarize! :arrr: :lol:
It's hard to think of an appropriate Welcome Speech for each newbie that asks a question here. (I agree with you, though.) This was why I started the :welcome: thread (originally <colon>welcome<colon>)... to give people ideas, as most were just copy+pasted. (*Guilty!*, I know, I know, I'm guilty too... :p )
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:welcome:
due to administrative reasons, this message was removed
how about that?
You know, if you post a three paragraph welcome message, I think its less of a post-count inflation then when you post something like that...
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No. No. No. He kills the welcoming. I think we can simply post the beam, then write something specific...no Welcome SpeechTM, something...personal.
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Ah-ha. So it doesn't have to resemble the welcome speech at all? Just your own little speech that you write for the person being beamed. I think that's doable. :nod:
BTW, (waves at the hidden cam) Hi, Goob!
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Let me put it this way. Which is more welcoming?
Hi there guys. I'm new here and I just downloaded FS2_Open and I'm loving it! Only problem is that I can't figure out how to get the FS1 port running
:welcome:
Huge long paragraph about Hyberintelligent blue, flamethrowers and Carl.
OR
Hi there guys. I'm new here and I just downloaded FS2_Open and I'm loving it! Only problem is that I can't figure out how to get the FS1 port running
:welcome:
Glad you're liking FS2. How far have you gotten so far?
You probably should figure out how to run FS1 Port first as FS2 spoilers quite a few things in FS1 and Silent Threat. Your problem is fixed by simply selecting your mod from the mod tab in the launcher before you run the game and then choosing the FS1 campaign in the campaign room. You may want to play Silent Threat after that but I'd better warn you that it's not as good as FS1 or FS2.
Hope you enjoy FS1 as much as you're enjoying FS2.
Is there really any competition?
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The second one, of course. :)
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kind of, it depends on different people and their personailities.
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You don't know the personality of a newcomes. You can try, but a confused post isn't enough.
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I don't know. I rather enjoyed the welcome speech I received from you guys. It gave many inside jokes that had me shuffling through boards for months until I figured them out, it had wierd things like a hyper-intelligent shade of blue that reflected our personalities, and it made me feel like I was, well, welcome. The problem has become that the welcome speeches are too long. We don't need to mention Carl, the Hyper-Intelligent Shade of Blue, Black Wolf's latest faux pas, the newest verision of Inferno, Wing Commander, the Babylon Project, and the Star Wars Conversion all in one post. Let the newbs figure that out themselves. They obviously have a keyboard; if they have a question, they'll ask. The only thing we need to do is make the welcome speech more concise. And don't just give them a copy-pasted welcome speech. Half the fun of the speech is rewriting it (which reduces the version number list). Honestly, write your own, make it concise, and make it personal. The newb you introduce tomorrow just might be the next Woomeister.
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You don't know the personality of a newcomes. You can try, but a confused post isn't enough.
was i taking about newcomers? no. i was talking about what kara said, from average forums members > newcomers. it depends on who is posting to a newcomer :).
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The newb you introduce tomorrow just might be the next Woomeister.
In fact, that's what I think. Many newcomers are working on new mods/conversions and they don't even have to wait before becoming important members of the community.
You don't know the personality of a newcomes. You can try, but a confused post isn't enough.
was i taking about newcomers? no. i was talking about what kara said, from average forums members > newcomers. it depends on who is posting to a newcomer :).
Ah, ok :)
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The newb you introduce tomorrow just might be the next Woomeister.
Yeah... It makes me sad when they come, ask a question and then disappear...
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Like I ?
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No, I mean like DISAPPEAR OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH!!!
not even lurk... :(
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I sent him PMs..."Post, Koth! Post!" And I had to wait a few months before getting a chance of welcoming him :nod:
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2nd one for sure......
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I sent him PMs..."Post, Koth! Post!" And I had to wait a few months before getting a chance of welcoming him :nod:
Does this:
:rolleyes:
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Is there any case of someone trying to be unwelcome to a new guy?
I know it happens on other boards, but i wouldn't expect to see it on HLP.
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Is there any case of someone trying to be unwelcome to a new guy?
I know it happens on other boards, but i wouldn't expect to see it on HLP.
I've not seen unwelcoming messages, just a hint of exasperation sometimes when a newcomer posts a new thread with the title "Problem with ........?" type topics and then just posts an error log with no detail of if they are receiving a crash, when the crash happens, what kind of system they are running, which build they are using etc.
But no real unwelcomeness though!
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Good, i would hate to see an unwelcome beam being fired on people. All in all overall the welcome paragraph can be a bit daunting i agree when a HLP virgin is being broken i by nine different 10 line+ paragraphs, i admit i wouldn't read them all myself.
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I've seen people make real asses of themselves when a newbie first posts a few times. Usually the admins step hard on that sort of thing though.
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I have to admit, (as i always try to avoid hypocriticla statements) I'm sure i've been in high spirits at work in the past and it translated inappropriately to HLP and other web forums. TO name an example a fresh faced first time poster asked the epic of all old school fred vets "How do i add a ship?"
I replied "ALT & F4"
He wasn't happy and i now see the value of "think before post" :nod:
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Like I said exasperation, or in other words/symbols/smileys.....................
:rolleyes:
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Hey, everyone look at the welcome beam. Whats it say?
exactly. There is no need to say it once with the beam and a second time with anything else.
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Correct, there should be just one beam per newcomer. Some threads are a complete mess... just because of the presence of so many welcome beams :blah:
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I don't keep track of how many i've welcomed.
Welcomed Newbies: 45
:nervous: I'm not having a pop. :)
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46 :P
I started counting them, I can't stop now. :P
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is PMing the members also considered harmfull?
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well who actually checks their inbox :p
well i know some people do
BUT WHO ACTUALLY USES IT < sorry for caps if it was annoying >
:hopping: use ur head and think
how many times do u receive a pm
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Lots of people use them. Just cause no one wants to send you one... :p
But I don't think sending PM is any better. In fact it's worse. How can you tell someone else hasn't sent one?
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Plus it gets creepy. :nervous:
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sorry to bump up an old post (but it is an announcement thread, so should it matter?), but i think PMing them isn't so bad. But then again kara has a point.
But i also thought of an idea. Why not just ditch the entire user-generated welcome beam, and just give them the Beam with/without the welcome speach automated after they register? I dunno, maybe display it after they hit the "join" button (or whatever) on their screen, or have an automated one PM'ed or even e-mailed? Or they can check a box during registration saying "display welcome beam" or something.
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I have stated, and others have stated, repeatedly, that there is nothing wrong with the welcome beam per se. The problem is with the welcome itself. The point of a welcome is to ease a newbie's transition into the forum, answer their questions, and solve their problems. Spamming them with irrelevant information (including in-jokes that they won't understand) and then running away, leaving them helpless, is completely counterproductive.
Since allowing people to discuss this seems to have confused the issue more than clarified it, I am closing this thread.