About that tutorial, I can share my experience as a (I think) average user.
Recently, a site of which I was a member decided to switch to Discourse for its forum. I never used Discourse before, so it was all new to me.
I thought the idea of getting badges was fun, and when I saw that there was a badge to get for completing a tutorial, of course I tried to find that tutorial. I looked everywhere, and I couldn’t find it. Eventually, I gave up.
Of course, I was looking for a place where “for the tutorial, click here” was written or something like that. It never would have occurred to me that you actually had to reply to discobot to get that tutorial.
It’s only when another user posted a message saying that only 10 people had completed discobot’s tutorial that I figured it out. It’s the fact he used the words “discobot’s tutorial” that made me read again the message of discobot with more attention, and enabled me to find the hidden tutorial.
So, that tutorial was difficult to find for me (and it looks like I am not alone in this). And I really thought it was made hard to find on purpose, as a kind of game. When I read the present discussion, I was kinda surprised to learn that it was apparently not intended.
After the fact it’s going to be tough – the idea is for new users to get discobot via their first PM after signing up for a new account.
At the point you describe, you were no longer a new user. Only the migration to Discourse made you a new user, so perhaps migrations should think about this.
I would like to add my reason why I ignored the bot.
It is just that at the point of signing up, I had done so because I had decided to write a reply to one of the topics I had seen. I had this task in mind and had absolutely no interest in delaying things by reading an automated message. Once I got the “first message spotlight” I just clicked it as required then went straight to the topic I wanted to join in on. It is not as though I need help replying to a topic, if I did then the forum is too complicated to use.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that the “first message spotlight” just got in the way of my task, like a pop-up ad or other annoying thing that comes up on web sites, my unconscious reaction was to get rid of it so I could complete my task.
On our forum I just turned the bot off as I couldn’t see a use for it.
IMHO, the main reason why New users don’t enable the bot, it shows many goals. You can do this and this and this… it is desirable to capture a person’s attention, you have a maximum of 3-5 seconds of reading. After we rewrote the text of the letter, the amount involved has increased dramatically.
Logically, the bot can write once more, if the user has not used the bot. Say next time when you visit resource. All should be brief. You don’t want to get a gift? If Yes, then…
Not sure what that would look like. Isn’t it, in some sense, already possible today to defer? If you ignore the Welcome message it will remain highlighted as an unread notification in your user menu.
Truthfully probably not, however I think if the first message spotlight appeared after I had been registered for x hours then because I would be returning to the forum to see what was new and less of hurry to complete a task, therefore more likely to read it.
It would be an interesting experiment to see if delaying the first message spotlight increased engagement with the bot messages. I’m probably not the intended audience though as I consider myself tech savvy so would only go looking for help if I couldn’t find a feature that I expected to be there.
One slight problem with that wording is it would need to be adaptive to account for sites with badges off. One of the first things I did on our forum was turn the gameification badges off. I’m sure they are great on a lot of forums but I know for sure they would just irritate the pants off of most of my audience.
Yes, very good. I made mine even shorter and it seems to have helped, but the vast majority is still not doing the tutorial. Mine is similarly short and looks like this:
Thanks for joining %{title}, and welcome!
I’m only a robot programmed to help you learn how this forum works. If you need to reach a real person, our friendly staff are also here to help.
But I can now show you some cool features of this forum right now. Are you ready? Let’s start by bookmarking this private message: just select below and then hit .
I haven’t been here in a few years, so I came by, looked at the blog, peeked at the forums, etc. to see what’s been happening with Discourse.
I looked at the blog post for 1.8, saw something about playing the “discourse game”, and I clicked on the video.
I skipped over the bookmark line and had to rewind the video slightly when the messages started appearing below and then I got it.
I did glance at the text at the bottom, but I didn’t pay close attention to it and the only thing which stood out to me was something about bookmarking the post.
I dismissed it as pointless and watched to see what the new feature is, ironically completely missing it
So, this might be one reason why people aren’t interacting with it.
I’m not saying that the following is a good idea, but on most sites with tutorials, they usually have something like Clippy jumping out at me and telling me that there’s a tutorial.
If I wasn’t watching a video showcasing the feature, I probably would have completely missed it.
Hi Michael! The problems you are describing have been well hashed out already, in this topic and in other topics on meta. My sense is that the discourse team are happy enough with the current functionality for now and that any further development on this is probably dependent on paid customer interest or is pr-welcome.
It’s not a high priority for me but I’d like to see a URL method for starting discobot tracks that can be added to the hamburger menu and used in messages to people, as well as the ability for mods to just go ahead and start tracks on behalf of other members. What @JagWaugh aptly called the “bot bazooka”.
Let me introduce you to the capabilities of our site. After the tour, I will give you a reward. 
If you need to reach a real person, 
Are you ready? 
Let’s start by bookmarking this private message: just select 
below and then hit 
.