Initial minimum topics/replies notification copy enhancement request

ux
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On new boards, staff see the following message:

 Create at least 5 public topics and 30 public replies to get discussion started. New users cannot earn trust levels unless there's content for them to read. This message appears only to staff.

This tells me what I need to do (gives me a goal) but doesn’t give me a convenient way to find out how close I am to achieving my goal.

Possible enhancements:

  • Tell me how close I am. e…g, “Create at least 5 public topics (you have 3) and 30 public replies (you have 12) to get discussion started…”
  • Give me a link to where I can find out how close I am. e.g., at the end of the copy, in a style that signifies secondary importance to the main copy: [link]View statistics on topics and replies.[/link].

Also, I’m not sure whether the message goes away automatically when you reach the goal (it should).

I just checked the admin interface and we apparently have 42 topics and 74 posts. Are posts synonymous with replies? (If so, the copy should be updated to mention posts and not replies). Does this mean we have passed the goal? In which case the message should automatically disappear (or, even better, give me some positive feedback for reaching the goal: “Congratulations… etc. (x)"

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Good ideas, make sure the topics are public as those are the only ones counted toward the total. @neil when does the staff alert clear? Is it possible for it to show semi-live counts?

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I looked on your site, and most posts are in the private Staff category, so they aren’t counted.

Unfortunately, the message doesn’t go away immediately when you reach the goal, and showing the live counts will take some work. It’s using the category stats which are only updated once a day… It uses those stats because we need to know which topics and posts are public and which are in secured categories. Other stats in admin and the about page include private categories.

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It might be OK if this banner was doing a query on every page load, since it is meant to go away and exists only when the site is new and tiny in size.

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