Bringing Icebreakers into Discourse

Community Building

AI-generated summary

galligan proposes bringing “Icebreakers” features, originally designed for Discourse for Teams, into core Discourse or as a plugin. Inspired by Know Your Team, the concept includes three types of questions: “Culture Questions” for transparent, periodic team feedback; “Social Questions” as lighthearted icebreakers that remain open for late joiners; and profile-based “Icebreakers” for new members. The proposal suggests admins could configure these as recurring Q&A topics in designated categories, potentially using automations to prompt admins if no icebreaker is posted within a set timeframe.

Responding to the discussion, tobiaseigen highlights the potential of using Discourse Automation to create topics from templates, noting that while scripts for creating new topics via automation are currently limited, the idea overlaps with improvements needed for canned replies. Decorbuz mentions a previously available “Mingle” plugin that offered similar functionality but is now broken.

tobiaseigen recalls a recent onboarding prompt with preseeded icebreaker topics and seeks a way to access this feature on existing sites. Moin provides a solution by pointing to hidden site settings (enable_site_owner_onboarding and site_owner_onboarding_max_days) that can re-enable the onboarding flow, or alternatively, directing users to copy the default icebreaker strings from the locale file.

Yee_Li appreciates the distinction between social and culture questions, noting that simple, open-ended social queries often generate more engagement than formal welcome threads. tobiaseigen agrees, sharing their strategy of using a dedicated “water cooler” category for introductions and icebreakers to foster community bonds. They also describe implementing an automation that awards a badge for responding to introductions and sends reminders to new members, a logic they suggest could be applied to icebreaker topics as well.

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Originally I’d had this idea for Discourse for Teams which was well suited for it, but with it being sunset, perhaps this kind of things could find its way into Discourse (either core, or as a plugin).

This feature is entirely inspired by Know Your Team here. On a regular basis their service asks a question of employees, sending each person an email, then aggregating the replies.

I’ve always felt like what they do is cool—but as a feature of a bigger communication channel.

Culture Questions

Asked once a week at a specific time this is generally a question specific to the company, its culture, performance, and goals. Examples are:

  • Do you think we’re a quality-driven team?
  • Have you been confused by any recent decisions by this team?

Questions can be answered publicly, or privately (which is then shared with a subset of users). The questions can have polls, and are asked one-at-a-time. The goal is that it provides a space for people to open up about what’s going on, and for leadership to be transparent. With Discourse, this could be easily done, and having the topics close when the next question is posed may be interesting.

More here: Culture Questions | Know Your Team

Social Questions

These are the “ice breaker” type questions. They’re asked once a week on a different day than the Culture Questions, and are generally lighthearted, intended to enable the team to get to know each other. Examples include:

  • Have you ever met anyone famous?
  • What are you reading right now?
  • If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be?
More
  • Who’s someone you really admire?
  • Seen any good movies lately you’d recommend?
  • Got any favorite quotes?
  • Been pleasantly surprised by anything lately?
  • What was your favorite band 10 years ago?
  • What’s your earliest memory?
  • Been anywhere recently for the first time?
  • What’s your favorite family tradition?
  • Who had the most influence on you growing up?
  • What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
  • What’s something you want to do in the next year that you’ve never done before?
  • Seen anything lately that made you smile?
  • What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited?
  • Have you had your 15 minutes of fame yet?
  • What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
  • How do you like your eggs?
  • Do you have a favorite charity you wish more people knew about?
  • Got any phobias you’d like to break?
  • Have you returned anything you’ve purchased recently? Why?
  • Do you collect anything?
  • What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

What’s different about these is that they’re left open, and allow anyone to come in and answer at their own leisure. This is nice for new employees who join later—they can add in their answer which then is seen by all other employees. Again, something that would be trivially easy for Discourse to do.

More here: Social Questions | Know Your Team

Icebreakers

Their version of ice breakers asks an individual the same six questions upon joining the team. Those are aggregated together under individual profiles, so that each person has a little home to get to know you by. These are the same as the “Social Questions” so the six answers are just their first foray into answering those.

See more here: Icebreakers | Know Your Team

How Discourse could do it

I think that you could enable admins to create one or more kind of “Q&A” type (Social Question, Culture Question, etc.), each with its own bank of questions, and a designated time that it will be asked on a regular basis. Those topics could have a pre-configured category and set of tags associated.

And as @Justin had previously seen this idea when it was about Discourse for Teams, he had a great idea:

Another option is to monitor for #icebreaker topics, and if none are posted in a set timeframe, then notify admins saying “Hey have you thought about posting an icebreaker?” and giving a suggestion to choose from (and then a quick link to post one).

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Thanks, Matt! Great to have this conversation up on meta. This would be a pretty neat use of Discourse Automation! As of now there is no script to create new topics using automation, I think.

I like the idea of using topics in a category, with all the benefits and privileges that come with categories. So you can stage a series of new topics to be posted in a specific category that come from another category. This could be useful for icebreakers but also for other activities, like an asynchronous forum-based course, or onboarding.

I believe this idea has been suggested for canned replies as well. The current canned replies UI kinda falls apart when you have many canned replies, or when you want to give people in specific roles access to managing and using their own canned replies.

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There used to be a Customization > Plugin that offered the functionality you’re looking for, but it’s been broken for a while now.

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Recently when I started a new site I was prompted to add some icebreaker topics! With some preseeded topics that I could just choose and post. That was awesome. Now the site is up already and I don’t know how to find my way back to there! :sob:

And I found this older topic searching for a way, and am thinking there is a goldmine here of more ideas for icebreaker topics that site admins might enjoy being made aware of as they start up their communities.

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There are 2 hidden site settings that might help you:

  enable_site_owner_onboarding:
    client: true
    default: true
    hidden: true
  site_owner_onboarding_max_days:
    default: 5
    hidden: true

You can change the onboarding to appear much longer and enable it again: Using Hidden Site Settings

Or you can just copy the icebreaker topics from the locale file:

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I like the distinction here between light social questions and deeper culture questions. In my experience, the light ones work best at the start. A simple question such as what someone is reading at the moment gets far more replies than a formal welcome thread, because it is easy to answer and gives others something to respond to. I also like keeping them open so late joiners can still add an answer. Do you find it works better to keep icebreakers in one dedicated category, or to spread them through the normal discussion areas?

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Great post! I think you’re certainly on the right track.

Personally, in sites created recently I’ve put intro and all icebreaker topics in a “water cooler” category, where others can then also start more topics as they see fit that don’t fit in anywhere else and are intended to strengthen ties in the community or for blowing off some steam. There’s also a water cooler chat.

I also created an automation to add a badge when someone has responded to the introductions topic, and to remind new members a couple times to respond to it if they have not done so. The same could be nice for icebreaker topics.

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