What would be the choices of practical way to alert TL threes (and or twos or everyone?) to the arrival of new registered users even though the new arrival hasn’t posted?
What might be the pros & cons to track and alert when the new user gains TL1?
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Now are you meaning to notify the ‘community’ of new users who have signed up? Or for the site team to be notified?
Are you talking Alerts on site or emailed alerts?
Thanks for the clarifying questions. In our community we try and be as inclusive tolerant and welcoming as we can be.
So whenever anybody posts for the first time and the automated this is the first time such and such as posted they are met by a number of regulars mostly till threes who say welcome and here’s a little orientation normally tailored to the posters needs .
When somebody joins and doesn’t post we have no way of knowing that they have even arrived
can list till 0 and 1 in date of joining order without having access to the admin panel or any special reports?
Could something real time be enabled to be included in the lounge?
So at this stage your questions illustrate that there are multiple options therefore it’s a pros and cons of the options because I can’t frame a question with that with a higher degree of specificity yet
our users have chronic medical needs and are looking for something, often anything to make sense of their new reality from very many different perspectives medicines prognosis relationships family benefits emotions… So welcoming people and encouraging them to post is an important part of the front end
Thanks in advance
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There are some automated messages sent when people first sign up that you can customise to include any relevant info you think would be useful, as well as signpost useful places to start, or encourage them to introduce themselves in a dedicated category, for instance. These can also be sent from a specific user, rather than @system, which gives them a little more character. There’s a bit of info in Welcome new users with customized trust level promotion messages that you may find useful. There’s also the Automation plugin which has a ‘send pms’ script you can use to set up any extra ones too (with a useful delay so you can pace the messages).
There’s no way for regular users to look up new TL0s easily, but that trust level is meant to be a very temporary one and people will progress to TL1 after a short time of reading:
But to see a list of new TL1s, anyone can check out the Basic badge list (if it’s enabled) and the latest people who have been awarded it should be at the top - Basic badge on Discourse Meta
You may want to consider what a sitewide ‘welcome’ etiquette would be for your site as well. It could be quite overwhelming for some to receive multiple personal messages from different people when first arriving/not having posted yet. Some people may need a little time to acclimatise and settle in first.
You can use the data explorer to create custom queries (which can be made available to certain groups so they can pop them in their sidebar). It could be a simple list of new signups, but you could also use these to generate a list of new people who you think meet specific criteria and would be suitable to reach out to (in a coordinated effort with your TL3s).
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Thanks @JammyDodger & @Heliosurge
I get the “overwhelming” message because all of our users have a compromised brain and in the early days disorientation and fatigue leaves very little capacity for anything. quite often language processing and sometimes visual capability is between temporarily and permanently damaged, dexterity is often a problem as well.
That’s a good reminder about TL0 I’ve tried to discuss on here that the mindset of sw authors affects usability and in our case that software author mindset wasn’t tuned for our community. Entering 5 topics is a cognitive load the some won’t equal.
They’re precisely the people that we’re most concerned to reach out to
TL4s are a bit strange. We have 11, five have not been seen this year, five have never given or received a like two are the same person / combined read time of 2 hours in 2yrs! 2 are 100% non-technical but regulars Who have been around a long time but have shown zero use of even recategorising a post. One admin person only visits the forum to put uncategorised posts in a category - Not something we care about as a community. Our users are tolerant & kind - I have never flagged a post (although I have PMed about three times to ask ”are you okay?”) and I bet 99% of the population would know that you could
All of the caring for the community is done by the members so we need mechanisms that can be made accessible either to tl 3 or two and three or 1&2&3.
Good shout on badges list!
I knew it but I hadn’t “processed” it ( due to my own cognitive impairments) !
In theory there are 29,000 basic ‘users’ (28,000 abandoned IDs?) & 235 member and 50 regulars.
Certified 33 !
Given like 640
Welcome 840
Editor 230
Emoji 333
@mention 150
It’s the drop-off rate between “creates an ID and looks around on day one to never comes back” - possibly because they don’t have the everything to get to the point where they get value (navigation, stamina, dexterity with screen or keyboard, read and understand…, Conventions such as the editor and markdown!!)
In part that is discourse UI, Which maybe we could slightly overcome with a better UX
Good point about receiving (lots of/any!) PMs - maybe a post with an @mention the day after they sign up?
Yeah a welcome post would be good. I have written one, made it a wiki and several people have contributed but we haven’t managed to get anyone to pin it yet after about 6 weeks. Currently a bunch of us link it into a reply to people’s first post.
This enquiry is a bit researched before I raise more in the forum
Data explorer might be an answer - takes me back to the mid 80s select star from table! “Every candidate key is a determinant…” I still have copies of codd & date and stuff by Stonebreaker!! 
I’ll read the other references if I haven’t already read them and any other “how to reach out to new users” and usability enhancements that anyone can suggest would be welcome input to the discussion I intend to hold there
Thnx
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Is your community invite/approved users only?
You probably don’t want your users to get notifications when a spammer account is registered
(one of my forums is low/medium activity, but we have up to 10 new spam accounts each day, which often don’t post right away)
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Hmmm
It’s so long ago since I registered I don’t remember the process
I vaguely remember that one has to go through an approvals process,
Is there a way that I can check?
but I do know that I’ve only seen one vaguely spammy user post a single dubious post in the last year.
Absolutely. If you’re an admin, you can have a look at these settings:
You can also try creating a new account.
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Nope I’m not. Just one of the tl3
That would make everything much simpler!
As above the TL4s & admins are MIA for the most part or don’t know what a tl4 can do - mostly it’s not a problem but equally we’re not grasping the opportunities - we’re not serving a significant percentage of those with a need who would benefit if a little UX improvement was in place .
But to do that we have to have a vision of what we can do hence the OP asking for suggestions
These are helpful settings to be able to adjust, was surprised there was no notification I saw even as administrator when a new member signed up and when setting was set to not require these be approved by staff first. Would be helpful for there to be an e-mail or other notification for new sign ups to admin + staff/volunteers maybe TL 3 too.
Just used the list of welcome badges granted this month so far. Over 30 so had to send 4 posts as only 10 @ in a post
Be nice to get those who aren’t TL1 but unless someone knows how…
What I sometime do at a quite small forum is to look at the /u page
Choosing today as a time span and sort by visits (like this) gives you a list of all users who visited today. The newest user will be the last one with one visit. Here this needs a lot of scrolling. The /about statistics show more than 500 active users in the past 24 hours and 36 sign-ups. That gives you an idea how far you have to scroll and how many new users you will find (Keep in mind maybe some of them were already deleted)
(try.discourse.org is an example with less active users. But the statistics there are less helpful)
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Thanks
They are the beginning of a practical modus operandi
5 signups today
I’ve looked at the uses for today and I’ve got lots of people with all zeros I’m not quite sure how I’m going to use that some of them I recognise as people have been around a long time
Unfortunately, a lot of this advice is only useable if you have access to the admin tools. As a regular user (even at TL3 or 4) you will have to work within the existing forum structures.
That said, knowing what’s available, and being able to demonstrate how it works and what it would look like, can help influence the decisions of the admin(s) (if you can get hold of them/they’re willing to listen).
The nuclear option is to create your own site and enact all the things you want to see there instead.
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Thnx JD
The challenge is very definitely how to met new joiners needs from within & with the facilities we do have.
I don’t care about the staff / admin / TL4 designations - but I recognise the limitations you point to and I do want to know about all the possible options, For example why is there a limit on likes - I’ll research that and maybe post if there aren’t already answers to cover it - I know there’s a thread that says that some forum users object to it elsewhere
I care about the fact there are 29,000 sign ups 800 TL1 230 TL2
And the question is how do we bridge the 28,200 gap - they signed up because they had an acute need but didn’t stick around enough to start getting met
I’m trying to address the other avenues like getting some influence, talking to the parent charity’s director for my region etc. Success is not on one path It requires using all available paths. Your nuclear option also has downsides - Indeed it isn’t so nuclear as more a transitional certainty as the NHS wakes up to the need for community. However that needs solutions to some of the issues I haven’t been able to discuss so I’m still looking for those opportunities
Are you sure all 28,000 users are interested in participating? Maybe they are spam profiles. If the forum was migrated, maybe they were active users a long time ago, but never visited the new Discourse forum.
By default, Discourse deletes TL0 accounts, who never posted anything and did not log in within that timeframe, after two years. So, if that setting wasn’t changed, these users probably posted something.
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Hi @Moin
These are good all good questions
I think it would be safe to conclude for the 28,000 got lost along the way and they had a strong enough reason to find the forum site and then sign up but that they didn’t find the forum easy & engaging enough to progress.
Given the nature of the need that cause people to join us yes I can be sure that they had motivation and weren’t just spam accounts. How many of them came across from the predecessor homegrown forum and couldn’t cope with the transition I don’t know
I do know that there have been 126 sign ups in the last 30 days and 46 have made it to basic and so far 14 have made it to member in that time scale but that will include people who signed up for before and people who have just signed up wont haven’t been present for long
I think the key question is “is there a consolidated introduction to discourse” or is it " if you want to know how it works read the code It’s all on GitHub”?
I am working my way through things like Jono bacon’s YouTube intros, phylobabble & of course the documentation category - but documentation that is descriptive of the architecture, use case scenarios as options isn’t obvious
Signposts would be welcome
Your quite welcome. Along with the Automation plugin recommended by @JammyDodger a couple of others that may work well.
The above plugin will allow a great number of things. In one particular application to your site. Might be a wizard that on sign up generators a pm maybe to a group(s) based on the new member’s interaction with the wizard. This would notify your day ‘ambassador’ group a notification of someone new with possible needs. The Wizard could also I believe guide a new user.to an introductory cat/topic etc…
Assign might also come in handy.
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