I’d be interested in knowing if you have a separate category for welcoming new members in your community.
If you have one, is it limited to welcome posts, or do you also use it for newbie/beginner questions?
For my support community, we will be encouraging people to post a first topic to introduce themselves so that we can answer their immediate needs and orient them (it’s a community for people who have diabetic cats, so often there is a lot of anxiety and sometimes emergency situations where time is of the essence).
I think it would also make sense to use this “Welcome” area for people to ask basic/general questions (either on feline diabetes or the community) rather than have sub-categories for them. But I’m not sure.
So I’d be interested in hearing what other people’s experiences are with this. How are things set up in the communities you manage?Thanks!
And sometimes people’s first posts are not intro’s but questions so it’s often more reasonable to file those in a better location more related to the question.
Sometimes it’s both, then it becomes a grey area. Unfortunately humans often present situations that are not easily categorised
This is an interesting question. If I understand correctly, not only are the welcome topics intro topics, but could also be “quick help” topics. In that case, a #Welcome:Introductions category may not be well suited.
One thing I thought of was either tags, or chat. If the topic needs quick help, you can tag it as such. Or, perhaps use Chat for quick questions/answers.
There’s a topic that covers part of your questions
edit: oh well, you already answered to this one.
re edit… This quote sort of answer your “separate topic” question:
That said; having to create a new topic in a new category after introducing themselves is a bit more friction for new users to participate on the forum, but I think having questions in introduction topics can quickly become a mess
In my experience, I’ve found that dedicated “Welcome” categories often see low engagement. Most new members fall into two camps:
They jump straight into conversations because their immediate need outweighs any potential “shyness.”
They “lurk” for a while to gauge the culture before ever posting.
Usually, people don’t want to post twice (once to say hi and once to ask a question). They’ll almost always just combine them. Once they are past that initial barrier to entry, they tend to just flow into the existing discussions.
That said, community culture is everything! Success for these types of categories depends on whether the community is small and intimate or a larger space where reputation is built over time. Personally, I’ve seen more success letting intros happen naturally within the main discussions.
I’ve also always been a big believer in reducing categories as much as possible (see my previous thoughts here) and only adding them when the need becomes obvious. If there are overlaps in intent (e.g., a “Questions” category vs. a “Welcome and First Question” category), it creates “choice paralysis” and initial confusion.
I like to think of Categories based on intent (asking questions, sharing tips, etc.) and Tags as a way of grouping those intents (e.g., #first-question, #emergency, #new-member). This keeps your top-level navigation clean while still allowing you to track and orient new arrivals.
Yes, definitely, that’s why I’m thinking about making the “welcome” category wider than just “introduce yourself”.
The way the community works now on Facebook, people are welcomed with a “welcome post” in which we mention them and give them a selection of important information. (Sick cats, so sometimes the clock is ticking.) That welcome post (published by us) invites them to post in the group to introduce themselves and let us know what is going on with them.
I’m thinking of replacing the first “welcome post” by an automated direct message in Discourse, which will then also invite them to post in the “Welcome zone”. This first post is important to us because it allows us to triage emergencies, panicked pet owners with a fresh diagnosis, old hands who are looking to do better, people with cats who have already died and want to hand off medications etc. to somebody else, dog owners (!), and curious people who don’t have a sick cat.
The “first posts” are signaled as such by Discourse (is that in the core? I see it here on Meta) and so will stand out in the Welcome zone. Subsequent posts that should belong in another category can be moved there, if needed.
One reason we want to “catch” new members as they arrive is because there is a lot of anxiety involved in having a sick cat, and our experience is that people completely freak out when they are faced with the main, active part of our community, which contains posts by very involved members (some over-invested I have to say), sick and dying cats, etc. So we want to “protect” new vulnerable members from that and give them a safe space where they can ask their first questions, get over the shock, before inadvertently stumbling into the “grown-ups” area. See the idea?
So in the welcome zone, we identify immediate needs, get them started by holding them by the hand, and once they are ready to let go of the training wheels we put them in a user group which has access to the more “advanced” areas.
