User blog comment:Dopp/Technical Update: April 26, 2011/@comment-4079395-20110510031252/@comment-93604-20110513005713

I don't remember if I specifically talked to any users with this particular problem. But then how could I? The users that somehow come back and find a user page would not see the need to talk about it. Most other sites with registration and user pages immediately create the user page on registration, and steer the new user immediately to that user page so that they can fill it out with any profile info they want others to see. Also to steer them to help linked from the user page, and to the private messaging tools on their user page so they can ask for help. Wikia is behind the times on this issue. Only MediaWiki sites (that I know of) make people create their own user pages by clicking on a redlink, and then doing something else. It is counterintuitive. I mean I just did what you told me to do. Now you want more. It is like those neverending surveys that people have learned to avoid. The automatic welcome messages are not any help unless the user edits something. Even when they do edit something the automatic welcome messages do not show up right away. The only logical conclusion many users can reach is that registration is partially broken. They may see other user pages, but theirs is not showing up. So they leave. If they come back they come back to where? If they forget their user name, how are they going to upload images? If they can't bookmark their user page they are likely to forget their user name. Many people do. Lots of people have a system for passwords based on site names, or they use the same password for all non-money-related sites. It is the user name that is easily forgotten unless bookmarked, especially since many people have lots of them. Most people will not want to restart registration. So even if they had an edit in mind, they are now frustrated, and less interested.