What we mean when we say personalization is not necessarily “personalization” in the sense that they are customized for every person (though actually, we have done some of this with conditional templates that address specific issues). What we mean is making them more personable. For example: instead of saying, “You have been reverted”, we have changed it to, “I’m Steven, a WIkipedia editor like you, and I reverted your edit because….”. Make sense?

As I do since more than two years, maybe longer, I welcome new user (within my working/editing area) offensely, but in a very personal, in a pretty short way. NO TEMPLATES. The hello-template we usualy use in de:WP is pretty colorful, has a lot of informations and even looks like a template. It looks almost perfect! Full packed with a lot of informations. Really nobody, who find this template on his discussion page after his first edit, understands, why he may read twenty different pages before continuing his little edit work within Wikipedia.

What I do is, analysing his work a little bit and offering my help related to his work – if he think its needed and if he want some help. Not more. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Sometimes its not necessary. It needs less than five minutes, but I always hope to meet someone, who will do later than much more edits. More, then I can do by myself.

To become a Wikipedia-Author, it needs a long time of understanding. Not rules from the first moment on. Rules are necessary, but by-laws. If using templates, please only simple ones, as simple as we were, when we made our first edit. We are not perfect at all, we just have more knowledge about Wikipedia rules. We should´nt try to impress others with perfect templates.