How are `system_messages.welcome_user.*` values used?

[tobiaseigen]

I agree the UI around enabling/disabling/customizing discobot is confusing.

Discobot is a core feature, and it’s called “narrative bot” in the admin settings. We did at some point add discobot to the description so it does show up when searching for it.

The rest of the admin settings are only discoverable if you search for “narrative bot” and not by searching for discobot. We can fix this.

There are three modes for discobot to help onboard new users, which I think are fairly apparent once you can see all the narrative bot settings.

1. No welcome PM at all from discobot
2. Interactive welcome PM from discobot
3. Non-interactive welcome PM from discobot

Customizing text is fairly advanced and you have to typically do a lot of digging to figure out how to change specific text. I don’t recommend sites try to edit the interactive welcome PM because it is fairly fragile and easy to break.

I can definitely see why sites would want to edit the non-interactive welcome PM, which is certainly hard to find. We could improve the discoverability. It happens here:

The included %(new_user_tips) are furthermore editable, and are somewhat dated. We have been removing links to the blog from discourse:

I think the todo here is along these lines:

1. improve narrative bot (discourse) admin setting descriptions
   • make sure they are discoverable also using “discobot” search term
   • take the opportunity to explain what the feature does and how it works
   • provide links to text customization where appropriate
   • link to documentation topic on meta (see 3)
2. improve the default text for the non-interactive welcome PM
   • update %(new_user_tips) text or replace it with actual text
3. write new documentation topic on meta that explains how the feature works in more detail and how it can be customized