I'm actually not sure about the effect of welcoming templates on participation, although memory says the summer of research has addressed it.  I don't seem to remember them having a negative effect though - I think the negative effect was templated warning messages as first points of contact, not templated welcomes.  I'll check it out tomorrow.  He appears to have gotten distracted by the French wikipedia in recent months.  He does also mention having filed 73 (!!) complaints against french checkusers in recent times, although it's unclear to me who he actually directed them to.  If I'm not mistaken, he also accuses the English Wikipedia of violating the geneva convention via the duck test at one point.  He still keeps one of his blogs updated, with many thousands of words about the same content issues he always focused on, as well as the evils of checkusers and ducktests.  He also explicitly mentions you at one point! I feel left out (