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Lately I have been visiting the Italian Stack community and I saw a lot of people (moderators included) tend to comment chatty things like “welcome to ...”. I know it’s friendly, nice and whatever, but isn’t it against the rules? Some said that small communities like this need to recruit more people and this could be a way to do it. Wouldn’t it be better if people just behaved correctly upvoting and accepting clearly right answers? When I first registered on stack exchange I only used stack overflow and I always got downvoted/had my questions closed ecc, for less important things.
Plus, people even ask/answer weird things that on more serious websites don’t exist (if not for just a few minutes) or, if they do, they get downvoted.
Here, instead they even get upvoted by a few people (probably just because the ones asking/answering have a lot of reputation or something) and it’s really confusing seeing this kind of difference between those websites.
I love stack Exchange because, unlikely to all others Q&A websites, it is constantly being controlled, so you only find quality content; But I think this uncontrolled (or controlled by a few people) community tend to ruin this brilliant web site.

So my main question is: why do moderators, the ones that more than anybody else should know how to use this website, make such errors (and nobody complains...)?

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    I don't understand your points: is it against the rules (which rules?) writting a comment to say welcome to a new user? Which are these "weird things" that are you referring to? May you give some examples? – Charo♦ Apr 13 at 7:25
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    I've added the "featured" tag in the hope of attracting the attention of users that might not check meta regularly. It would help if you gave some examples of "such errors", in order for us to weigh on them (and maybe admit mistakes, if there were: we're human ;)) – Denis Nardin♦ Apr 13 at 8:10
  • Sure, for instance I see some users tend to ask deprecated things we don’t use anymore in Italian. It’s like if I asked an hardware question on Stack Overflow... It would be deleted immediately – Marybnq Apr 13 at 8:36
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    @Marybnq That's because hardware questions are explicitly off-topic on SO. Old usage of Italian is explicitly on-topic on Italian.SE (and in fact I find it extremely interesting) :) It might be interesting to ask a meta question to better define the scope of this site, but it tends to be more inclusive than exclusive. PS: please ping me when you're answering me or I might miss the message – Denis Nardin♦ Apr 13 at 8:37
  • But it’s confusing to people that come on here wanting to learn spoken and used Italian, and instead runs across old expressions... I don’t want to be rude or anything else, it’s just that I think people would be more attracted to the website if it was more serious like SO... but that’s just my opinion – Marybnq Apr 13 at 8:41
  • italian.stackexchange.com/q/10379/5327 here for example this guy commented welcome and then answered... he could have just put his comment inside his answer? This is just the first I found, I can link you more and more – Marybnq Apr 13 at 8:42
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    @Marybnq There are tags to separate the various topics. We might discuss the creation of a tag to explicitly mark the questions referring to historical topics (I've never thought about it, but it could be a good idea), but the truth is that if we only allowed the discussion of contemporary Italian usage, this site would be even smaller than it is. The tolerance of those comments varies widely across the SE network, and I personally don't see why they are such a big deal on a small site (you don't see tens of such comments on every answer, which is the reason why they are banned on SO) – Denis Nardin♦ Apr 13 at 8:47
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    Frankly, I don't see why you say that the historical study of languages is not "serious". Of course we should prefer answers with sources and references (I try to put them as much as I can), but it's a bit unclear what you mean by "serious" (if you mean "like SO", as I explained in my answer, it is basically impossible because the communities are just too different numerically for the same rules to work) – Denis Nardin♦ Apr 13 at 8:50
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    @DenisNardin: ELU has an archaic tag for this kind of questions. Marybnq: notice that these are on-topic on ELU and are also on-topic on other SE sites dedicated to languages. – Charo♦ Apr 13 at 9:07
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    Kind of related: Should “Welcome to [site]” (and nothing else) comments be flagged? – Andrew T. Apr 13 at 12:07
  • As for the “Welcome” comment + standard answer, that's the correct behaviour. I'd loathe an answer that also included chatty remarks. – DaG Apr 13 at 12:13
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    What do you mean by “weird things”? Could you provide some explicit examples? – DaG Apr 13 at 12:25
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    @Charo When you open the text box to write a comment, there is a notice that says "use comments to ask for clarifications or add more information". So, in some sense, there is a 'rule' that says how comments should be used. – Federico Poloni Apr 14 at 20:25
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Welcome to Italian.SE! We are happy to have you here.

Every website on the Stackexchange network has its own particularities. It is true that comments welcoming and thanking are discouraged in general, but that's because they are targeted at more high-traffic sites. As you'll have found out, Italian.SE is unfortunately not high-traffic, so we tend to be a bit more informal.

If you have specific objections to one question or one answer, by all means open a meta question so that we can discuss it. You'll find we are a friendly bunch, and one of the advantages of the traffic being low is that we can afford to devote some time to each individual case (rather than the much harsher treatment you can find on other sites).

One word of caution: you shouldn't compare Stackoverflow with any other site on the SE network. It has an amount of traffic that even the second biggest website can only dream of. The rules on Stackoverflow are, of consequence, much harsher and stricter than anywhere else.

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@Marybnq Welcome on ItalianSE!!!

Maybe you’re right, being very strict and formal, but as correctly pointed out by @Charo this is a small community compared to SO for programmers.

Moreover, if I’m not wrong, even the SO guys noticed that SO for programmers had become quite hostile and harsh to newcomers and launched some kind of remediation for this problem. (Just think about the New Contributor shown for newcomers)

Many colleagues told to me many times that they're not going to ask questions on SO because they’re afraid of being downvoted or they think the question would be abruptly closed.

This site should be inclusive and should try to attract traffic and users and, honestly, I don’t think a welcoming comment would be the main problem of this site right now.

Again you’re saying it’s against the regulations and probably you’re right but I think we could stretch a point, at least till this site will get bigger.

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