Universal Videogame List - www.uvlist.net

re: Welcome?
A welcome note/message is mostly useful for pointing out to users where they can find all the necessary info (such as the user guide), some basic info on how to go about things, etc. I personally hate welcome messages that say nothing beyond the welcome (they _are_ automated messages, so some info on how things work would be appreciated).

Alternatively, and I personally would prefer it a lot more, is some "start page" (e.g. uvlist.net/start) with some of the info shown in user page (tag cloud, but the one I suggested elsewhere, not the current most added tags), some recent activity that might interest the user (not their own), links to useful things, and some "utility" features useful only for members. Some other sites use these to some extend. A bit like a control center of sorts with access to all the nice info at their fingertips instead of having to "navigate" the site to reach it.

One noticeable benefit of the start page is that it's located on the site itself, not in their mailbox, so they don't need to access their mail to find out things.


Unfortunate side-effect of the amount of info they store and allow their users to store. For me it works quite well, although some recent changes made some aspects a bit more difficult to use.

I wasn't about a real "welcome message" (we have it, on top/right, but it just replaces a boring "you are logged as")
More about the ability to show at a random user, at a glance, that this site is cool and has a lot of interesting things, not waiting for him to browse twenty+ pages to get this.

The homepage should do to this, while the startpage you talk about is the users page.
Both should need a good rewrite.

IMDb seems to give that feeling, but I don't really see how it does it :\

Some simple tour of the features UVL has might be good idea. Replacing the curt list of features in the login box, you just give them some tour link which gives some brief description of how things work and where to find them (starting with aspects of UVL that don't require login).

New users should be mailed a generic welcome message with link to the tour and some other not so vital pointers (such as where to report bugs and any suggestions on how to improve UVL).

The tour is mostly useful in summarizing (semi-graphically) all what you can do in UVL. Excluding any beta features that don't show normally, though I'd appreciate if regular users could use/see some beta features if they can't already (such as game relations), possibly after checking some "Enable beta features" checkbox. There should be some additional tour page listing the beta features, where they are found, and what their purpose is.

Also, "Welcome new user!" The underlined bit could be easily removed as it is prone to being false statement or highly optimistic/presumptuous of anyone visiting UVL.

I don't know one way or another about the interface's effect.
I know I don't feel welcome at database sites that erase my contributions arbitrarily (instead of correcting/completing them). That's why devote the majority of my efforts here.
I don't think jenna24d felt welcomed. Who knows if she even saw my message. On the other hand she may have not seen either response.

Also, in the new user mail, if you decide on that, you might want to note that it is a one-time message. Reassure people they havn't been added to a newsletter/spamletter list or a list of "notify me when any UVL user does anything including itch scratching".

That's a problem with the fact that we don't get notified if there's a reply to some thread we've posted in. Most forums have thread subscription checkbox and some simple way to unsubscribe from them but ours is quite barebones compared to any.

The tour should include info on what UVL is not, such as download site, official info site for any of the games, any kind of PR or support site for them, and so forth.