+1
On my forum(s) I have a dedicated category for newcomers to introduce themselves, like this one:
Trust level 0 users see a banner on the homepage that prompts them to post in this category, though it is not mandatory.
A lot of forums make an introduction step mandatory, and personally, I don’t really like it.
I usually don’t like to introduce myself, and I won’t force “my” users to do so.
When creating a topic in this category, the template has 3 basic questions that users can start from.
Also, and I think it is an important part of this category, these topics are automatically closed after 1 month, else they sometimes drift into endless updates about some journey or infinite discussions, and there are more proper categories for this.
A good example of this phenomenon would be this introduction which quickly gained 80 replies in one month:
I didn’t try a single topic for all introductions, as I find introducing ourselves in this context a bit meaningless, and less regular users are prone to welcoming newcomers in this kind of topic. At least I’m confident it would be like this in my communities. It’s also based on what I’ve seen here and there on other forums.