EDIT – before anyone reads further: this problem was only with a link I’d added within text to start the Discobot tutorial via PM. I had created a conflict for user levels lacking permission to initiate PMs – but everyone can receive the tutorial PM from Discobot that appears in their notifications. I’ve deleted the unneeded link. Thanks to Hawk for helping me understand this.
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I learned that new users were getting an error when clicking “Send message” to begin the first step of the Discobot tutorial.
I’d had “personal message enabled groups” limiting PMs to trust_level_1 (which I believe I had changed from default.)
Updating this to trust_level_0 allows new users to start the tutorial:
My question: shouldn’t the Discobot be accessible to any user, regardless of this PM setting? I’d still kind of like to restrict TL0 users from sending PMs to other users.
Is there a different setting elsewhere that I should have looked at instead?
I am, thank you. Did you get into the tutorial via the notifications panel?
I’ve just found that starting the tutorial from the notifications panel does work. The thing that leads to an error is the tutorial link on our About page, which I took from elsewhere on Meta:
I clicked the green PM notification on my avatar, which is how we assume people generally find it.
Ah yeah – that’s the issue. That is bypassing the logic that allows people to respond to but not start a PM. I’d change that up on your About page to say something like “New users can get an interactive walk-through of forum features by clicking on the green notification on their avatar when they join” or similar. Alternatively, remove it altogether because the new user tips will guide them there automatically.
Thanks, Hawk – appreciate your time and responses!
I’d added that link early on because it seemed harmless, but I didn’t understand the implications of initiating a PM vs. responding to one. I’ve removed it & will rely on the user tips for now.
