Am I doing something wrong? When I send start tutorial etc. as a Chat to @discobot, nothing happens.
AI-generated summary
Users are confused about Discobot’s lack of response in chat. mforbes notes that sending commands like start tutorial in chat doesn’t work, and the terminology around “personal chat” and “personal message” is misleading. Moin clarifies that Discobot only responds via personal messages, not chat, and references the official documentation. maiki highlights the confusion in UI design, particularly the ambiguous chat button. Moin suggests clarifying that Discobot doesn’t chat, but current settings don’t allow disabling chat messages separately. RGJ points out a setting in chat preferences, while Firepup650 notes it doesn’t prevent message receipt. The discussion revolves around improving clarity and user experience.
Discobot does not chat.
As it explains you have to send a personal message.
For example you can use this.
I guess what is really confusing is that, you click on the Chat button, and it says “Personal chat”… then I send a “message” to the discobot and it ignores me. It really seems to me that this would constitute a “personal message”… however, I realize that the term personal message has a completely different technical meaning here. But without a comprehensive manual that explains these things (that no one will read), it is very confusing to use the same terminology.
Further confusing things, in these “personal chat’s”, the chat refers to “Showing all messages”… but these are not “personal messages”…
Note: neither term is clearly defined in the Understanding Discourse for new users.
Ah, I see what you mean, @mforbes!
It is not at all clear which of those buttons should be pressed. Thanks for bringing this up!
Now… what should we do? ![]()
Make a text change? Remove the chat button from discobot? Get discobot on chat?!
You already started a feature request Does @discobot chat?. But I think the tutorials would not work in chat.
So maybe clarifying that it does not chat is a better idea. Just hiding the button on the usercard may not be enough, because you could still start a chat. I think disallowing users to send chat messages to discobot would be better. But at the moment there is just one setting to disallow chat and personal messages. So you cannot use that.
Related to Ai bots have chat enabled but do not support it
No, there is - there is an Enable Chat checkbox on each users Chat preferences page.
While that’s true, that doesn’t prevent that user from getting chat messages.
Just adding the discussion where that came up
Chat button on user card when user does not allow chat - #4 by jericson

