I found a moderator guide in French, but I couldn’t find an introduction or first-time user guide in French, and my users are not English speakers.
Are there any?
Thank you
There’s this:
(Not to mention discobot 
)
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I have created a Discourse site to start discussions among the inhabitants of my neighborhood, discussions that can spill over into audio or video conferences.
I am an English speaker, but my potential contacts are not, often retirees.
I am looking for (or will try to create) a very simple document in French that explains how to use Discourse.
Where can I find elements of an answer?
It seems to me that there are two chicken-and-egg type problems: technical and engagement.
Publishing a vade mecum on the workings of discourse is good, but it might tend to be counterproductive from an engagement perspective.
“In my experience,” these documents are hardly ever read.
Encouraging users to click on create a topic is essential and, in my opinion, the most difficult.
If age is a factor, I think it will be more in terms of caution or reserve than technique.
On the other hand, the person who asks a question usually gets a directly usable answer depending on their progress; having a support category or feedback on the site and a how-to tag is important.
It is possible that a sandbox category (or a try instance) deleted daily would facilitate the first step.
I also try to regularly publish in-depth topics, each showcasing a formatting technique or a feature, sometimes even explained just below in a reply.
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There are several things whose “discoverability” leaves something to be desired, in my experience 
People don’t ‘see’ the bell, and don’t know they can mute topics or categories that don’t interest them. Same for emails - it’s hard to know what the right default setting is for emails, but people easily feel ‘overwhelmed’.
People don’t have the reflex “logo = home”, so they often don’t know how to ‘return’ to the default view - and they don’t easily discover the category view either (if we have the most recent by default), and vice versa.
But Benjamin_D is also right - in this day and age, people no longer read entire essays that present the big picture. They can’t even be bothered to look in an FAQ - they want to be able to ask a human their question and get an answer right away!
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Thank you, but it needs to be explained in a few lines how to get started for users who are not comfortable with computers (especially seniors).
In these times of isolation, I am trying to initiate exchanges between residents of the villages around me, on topics proposed by them: scientific, societal, local topics, …
Although very familiar with computers, I am discovering Discourse.
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Okay, so I would say that the most important thing is the structure:
- A topic is a discussion about one subject. You therefore need to give a clear title when creating a new topic.
- Within this discussion, users can react by posting messages.
- The system remembers how far we have read each topic and takes us to the right place when we return to it.
- Topics are sorted by categories - this is where you click to see them.
- You can also see the most recent topics - this is where you click.
- This is where you click to create a new topic; don’t be afraid of choosing the wrong category, a moderator will correct it at worst.
- You can always go back to a message to correct its spelling (a major concern for French speakers). With the icon
- If you have questions, you can ask them here.
Actually, maybe we’re targeting the wrong audience: are you looking for explanations for yourselves as users, or for yourselves first?
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This is exactly how I feel, I “have” a community that could meet IRL like you @Touzot, but it’s login only. Therefore, I take advantage of the email where I insert the invitation link (I use an external Gmail account to bypass the potential problem of the first message going to spam) and in which I explain:
- you have to check your spam
- logo = go back to the start
- avatar = colored circle with initial (with a bit of detail depending on the person)
- for the rest, you have to ask questions (even directly by email at the start and then I’ll redirect you to the app) or read the answers to questions already asked by others.
- click everywhere, you can’t break anything.
I don’t even go into the details of the composer, anyway the ratio of readers/writers is around 1/20-30 in my case.
and above all, I push a lot for mobile installation.
It seems to me that “it’s too complicated” sometimes means “I don’t have much to say that is interesting enough to be worth investing the time it takes to figure out how to say it”, and that’s okay, the essential thing is that they continue to read because everything arrives, even inspiration.
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I’m looking for the minimum to say to future users so they don’t disengage by saying: it’s too complicated for me…
On my side, I am a retired University Professor, but still active as president of the National Digital University Engineering and Technology UNIT (www.unit.eu). I am therefore comfortable with IT. But I haven’t used Discourse until now.
I agree with your remarks
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honestly after 2 years my message has almost become “hey come see, click on this, trust me, it’s good you’ll see, I’ll explain later, now let’s have a drink” (very important the reward 
)
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Why does the “Home” topic default to “Top” (which is empty in my case) and not the posts within the “Home” topic? You have to click on “Recent,” which is not practical for a new user.
This does not happen with the other topics I have created.
I was requesting a brief introduction in French for new users who are not very comfortable with computers.
I have made a first draft that I will test in the coming days:
The forum website address is: https://forum.fondation-unit.fr
All visitors can see all public information on the site, but cannot participate in conversations.
To do so, you must register or log in if you are already registered: click on the corresponding box at the top.
The site is organized into categories that group discussion topics.
Each topic is a conversation thread fed by users by clicking on “reply.”
The site’s homepage lists the existing categories. Clicking on a category gives access to the topics it contains.
At any time, you can return to the homepage by clicking on the “Discourse” logo in the top left corner.
The three main categories visible on the homepage are:
- Home: information for new users and advice answering questions
- Discussion topic proposals:
- Post new conversation topics
- Show interest in a conversation topic posted by another user
- Discussion topics opened by the moderator when several users are interested in the same topic. Users can participate in conversations by clicking on “reply.”
The moderator can suggest users continue a conversation in a video conference. They will send a link to interested users by email.
it’s a category, it’s possible to set the default display of its topics
https://forum.fondation-unit.fr/c/accueil/edit/settings
Thank you very much …
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