Quickly tell someone why they should look at a topic

So these are the workflow patterns you’re looking at for a user?

  1. User invites other user to participate.
    :small_blue_diamond: Click ‘invite’ button at topic bottom, enter username, send invite with button click on the same page.
    :small_orange_diamond: Alerts to entire thread. Does not allow to specify which reply to possibly reply to. Currently no context other than canned invite message.

  2. User invites other user to view.
    :small_blue_diamond: Click time stamp in upper right corner of a reply for share popup and and copy url or copy url from browser address bar or copy url from share popup but edit the url if wanting to only link to the topic overall. Use keystrokes or click avatar in upper right of viewport and then select ‘messages’. Click New Message button. Paste url (and also edit url if wanting overall topic from using share popup). Add personal message to view, or maybe even participate. Click and send message.
    :small_orange_diamond: Alert to specific reply or edit url for entire topic. Allows small extra message for context. Lots of steps to execute.

That seems very disproportionate and possibly rendering this entire ‘poke’ feature redundant or maybe frustrating. What is the use of ‘poke’ if it does not give the same use as a private message with a url from the share popup of a reply or from the browser address bar? Is it suppose to streamline and encourage users to invite for participation and viewing without resorting to a @mention cc or having to go through even more steps to get more eyeballs in the topic and maybe then discouraging them altogether to even try and get others to check in?

If I am incorrect on the implied path a user is suppose to take to use these features or anything else related to my reply above, please correct me. I am honestly looking to understand this.