I suspect this might have to be a marketplace topic, but I’d like to start here because I feel there’s merit for it from a community standpoint.
Shortly we’re going to start a process of welcoming new members weekly in a new topic under our announcements category. The post will tag the new members and have a short call to action to introduce themselves.
I understand that there an automated direct message that they get as part of Discourse, so this would be an additional call to engage.
From the community perspective, the goal is to
-
Creating weekly “cohorts” so that there is a potential creation of a bond between that specific group. A sense of commonality.
-
Show that they weren’t the only person that signed up this week. Others did too, so they made the right decision by joining the community.
-
With those two in mind, encourage them to introduce themselves to the cohort for that week and therefore the community at large.
@HAWK might be able to add some insights from the community/engagement side too.
Could this process be automated?
I’m sure there is a limit for the number of tagged people in a topic… but until certain communities hit that point, I think this is worth exploring.