הכנסת “נורמיים” לפורומים!

קהילה
1

To my surprise…many people don’t quite understand what forums are and how to use them.

I really want the appeal of my discourse site to be far and wide.

So I am just wondering, what do you guys do as an onboarding process to a) make your site more “sticky” for visitors, but b) sell in the CONCEPT of a forum and get people to start contributing and feeling confident to do so.

Grateful for any advice, examples of forums that do this well, or generally any ideas to throw into the mix.

Thanks in advance!

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2

While I think I know what you mean here, would you mind giving some context or detail on this?

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I think it depends on the topics and the community you’re working with. For instance, I work on a knowledge base and I made some virtual meetings with the people to show and get them to know the platform, make them feel confident to use it, teach them what to publish and what would not be allowed, but also make them know that I’m here to help them with any issue.

Maybe yours it’s not for work, but hope my experience gives you some ideas!

Good luck!

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4

Hi @jamesbrooks

Interesting discussion topic. I’m wondering how you’d reflect on this question now that two years has passed since you asked. :slight_smile:

I think the most important thing is to always emphasize the importance of community and community members helping each other rather than simply waiting for some dedicated helpdesk.

One way to do that is watch out for flags such as “DEAR SUPPORT” that should be modified with a note to “Dear Community,” and of course any related wordings…

Another important way is to highlight the active and helpful members contributions. We have a monthly post where we encourage positive community contributions.

Looking forward to hearing from you and others around here.

Thanks!

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Question Im thinking about os, how do you get the ones that have no idea about the app here. I’m new here
and I’m i Stumble on things like this because i get distracted online and just search and read. But how would one find this discourse is this s word of mouth find for most people?

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7

I think making your site discoverable to prospective members is certainly important, though I think it’s a slightly different subject than the one this topic is about.

If you have a search you may find a more suitable topic for that discussion. :+1:

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Great questions, this can be a major challenge how to do onboarding for the normies.

The primary concept for Discourse seems to be “Community,” so for someone to join means they have opportunity to contribute + participate in the community.

One strategy I’m considering going with is to use discourse as a requirement for potential clients to create an account with for screening process to evaluate if it will be possible to work together or not. Policy would be: if people aren’t willing to create account, then I can’t work with them.

Not sure if anyone else has tried that strategy or would recommend other strategies.

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9

I did have one (older, but intelligent) person say that they didn’t understand my forum or how to use it. I should perhaps ask them to see if they can remember their first impressions.

For me, there’s a hierarchical organisation which is obvious, but of course it isn’t obvious to everyone

  • there are categories, which contain topics
  • each topic introduces an idea and prompts a conversation
  • the conversation happens in replies to the topic

At any one time, there are several active topics, and you won’t see the latest comments until you click on the topics of interest to you.

Also visible are older topics which are not presently active.

There’s no way to see the latest comments without visiting their respective topics.

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10

That is helpful general description of the structure, which seems fairly clear but not necessarily always obvious.

For new people who see a discourse site if there is active conversation happening, it is simple to be able to create an account and write a comment to reply. The act of having to create a new account may be the most significant hurdle for many people with discourse being a new platform with independent sites, as opposed to a major social media platform where it’s possible to join a new group without needing to create a new account.

For me the most important benefit of communication through discourse is the opportunity to talk in the public realm, as opposed to private. Talking over e-mail or the phone can be heavily limited if trying to communicate with someone who has a completely different perspective than oneself. It can be necessary to have more outside perspective to a conversation to be able to understand what someone is talking about.

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11

[ציטוט=“פרנסיסקו בל্যাকברן, הודעה:6, נושא:230602, שם משתמש:פרנסיסקו_בלאקברן”]
אבל איך מישהו יכול למצוא את השיח הזה אם הווסאוורד שואוטום משמש לרוב האנשים?
[/ציטוט]

היי @פרנסיסקו_בלאקברן
שאלה מעניינת. אני חושב שהזאת בעצם חלק מתכנית ההצטרפות שהיא לדעת מאיפה המשתמשים שלך מגיעים. אנחנו מקפידים שהקהילה תוזכר בכל מקום, כולל באתרים הראשיים ורשתות חברתיות וכן בניוזלטר.

כדי לענות על השאלה שלך ולמצוא פתרון, תצטרך לקבל את ה"מסע המשתמש" שלם. כשראית מבנה של מסע המשתמש מהנקודה שבה מעודדים את קיומו של הפורום ועד לרגע שבו הם הופכים לחברי קהילה פעילים, תהיה לך הבנה איך למשוך משתמשים, לסייע להם להצטרף ולהשתתף. הפרטים תלויים במקרים הספציפיים ובסוג הקהילה.

בהחלט חוויה חיובית ומילה של פה לפה יכולה להיות הברית הטובה ביותר והנאמנה ביותר שלך לעיתים.

[ציטוט=“ארכיטקט, הודעה:8, נושא:230602, שם משתמש:ארכיטקט”]
אסטרטגיה שאני שוקל להשתמש בה היא להשתמש ב-Discourse כדרישה למדי ליצירת חשבון עבור מועמדים ללקוחות כדי לסנן אותם ולבדוק אם אפשר לעבוד יחד או לא. המדיניות תהיה: אם אנשים לא מוכנים ליצור חשבון, אז אינני יכול לעבוד איתם.
[/ציטוט]

היי @ארכיטקט
סקרן לדעת יותר על תהליך הסינון בתכנית ההצטרפות שלך. אילו אסטרטגיות/שאלות אתה משתמש? מה אם הם לא עונים על השאלות או לא משלים את הפרופיל שלהם? יש לך אנשים שנרשמים nhưng נותרו לא פעילים או שזה אתר “בתשלום” ולכן בסופו של דבר הם חייבים לבחור לעבוד יחד או לא?

ייתכן שיש אנשים שמתעניינים אך מתלבטים ביצירת חשבון. אנחנו לפעמים משתמשים בקישורי הזמנה של Discourse למקרה זה.

[ציטוט=“Ed S, הודעה:9, נושא:230602, שם משתמש:Ed_S”]
התרשמו הראשוני.

לדעתי, יש ארגון היררכי ברור, אך כמובן שזה לא ברור לכולם

  • יש קטגוריות, המכילות נושאים
  • כל נושא מציג רעיון ומעורר שיחה
  • השיחה מתרחשת בתגובות לנושא

בכל זמן, יש כמה נושאים פעילים, ואתה לא תראה את ההערות האחרונות עד שתקליק על הנושאים שמעניין אותך.

גם נושאים ישנים שנ אינם פעילים כרגע נראים

אין דרך לראות את ההערות האחרונות מבלי לבקר בנושאים המתאימים.
[/ציטוט]
היי @Ed_S
נקודות טובות, וזה טוב שיש נקודת מבט מפושטת על הרעיון המרכזי. התרשמו ראשוניים הם הכל, ואני חושב שההבנות האלו חשובות לכל מי שמשתמש ב-Discourse.

יש כלים שיעזרו עם האתגרים שהזכרת, כגון “נושאים קבועים בכותרות”, סדרי עדיפויות בקטגוריות ותיאורים, ופרסומות. את כל אלו השתמשתי, אך כרגע אני עובד על בחינה של חלקים נוספים בתכנית ההצטרפות, כמו ההודעות הראשונות שהם מקבלים, קווי עיצוב באימייל, מדריכים…וכו"ק.

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Hi, @gassim,

I don’t have a requirement for new user accounts to answer specific questions or complete all the profile information fields. That may be wise to have some screening/interview questions to ask new people for introduction if they make an account.

Also don’t have paywall setup for site, those can be good but also good to have free membership option.

For work projects of designing and constructing buildings there is a lot to talk about for those so can be necessary for folks to be able to communicate through a platform like discourse for official communications.

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I’ve noticed that a strong onboarding process can really make a difference in how engaged users become. One approach that seems effective is to create a guided introduction for new members—kind of like a ‘forum tour’—that highlights the benefits of participation, explains the forum’s structure, and showcases examples of valuable discussions. Also, sending out a welcome message or starter kit with tips on how to post and engage can help demystify the process for those unfamiliar with forums

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Could you expand a bit on how you noticed this? When did you start the onboarding, what was your trigger?

Nailing the onboarding is super hard, so if you have a successful implementation, I want to know more :slight_smile:

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I’d also love to read your notes on this @Sustainability-Yogi

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As a brand new user looking to create a site, this was the first post that talked about the need for simple introductions. This is very powerful and robust system, but as a very skilled technologist, I am completely flummoxed about how and where to even begin to get help in understanding much about it. There are categories galore, but not a single, well focused and promoted document that tells me how to get started, learn the starting basics, and where to go for real-time help if I have complex questions, and don’t have a week or two to read all the documentation. I expected to find real-time chat for support, but as of yet, I can’t find any, nor even a discord community to get help. I go to the Developer’s category, and find only a few posts less than 4 months old. I just think the onboarding process could use a lot more attention, and if we finally deploy our system, I will target some of our resources toward that.
Meanwhile, can someone direct me to the best place to ask random questions that community members are likely to answer? Thanks in advance!

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Suitable categories here. Quite often there will come answers from people who had time to read at least docs for users and admin, because those should know before there is need to start to do dev related questions :man_shrugging:

I don’t know. I red something like 15 minutes before I started my first forum. Sure, after that there has been situations where I needed to dig in deeper and that might need more time, but never two weeks.

But one thing I don’t understand, sorry to say that at loud. But you want a discord channel to get help in same second from users who should be there something like 24/7 for someone, who has not time to read helps and docs — or ask in purpose built forum :flushed:

Or did I misunderstood something?

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Why is that a problem? Many documentation topics are quite old. It’s better to check when it was last updated. And questions asked below those topics are often split into their own topics.

Support is a great place for questions. But that won’t exempt you from reading documentation. In that case, a post in Marketplace and paying someone to help you could be a better choice.

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Apologies for not responding to this sooner, Jakke, but we have only just recently decided to go with Discourse for our project. It took a while to get several different people to assess it for our purposes.

I also apologize for not nuancing my post a bit better. It was really meant to be more constructive criticism than a random gripe, but I crafted it quickly after one of my devs had exactly the same experience I did (finding it very hard to get oriented quickly). Like you, he and I both created forums in 15 minute, as well. But that was only the beginning of many questions which we then spent several days trying to answer (not very successfully). I feel our experiences, while perhaps not entirely typical, were still somewhat confirmed by several others that I subsequently asked to evaluate Discourse for me, as well.

None of this was too unique for me. After many years of working with open source projects,I’ve learned that devs and communities can take a lot for granted in terms of what new users may or may not experience, grasp or process well—or fast. Many have told me over the years that first impressions matter, and my goal was to express them. I wanted to be helpful, but I can see from my own words and the responses that I just didn’t spend enough time explaining my premises. Your response will help me not make that mistake going forward.

I am now quite impressed with Discourse, and feel it’s the right choice for our large, ambitious, and important project.

I have a growing list of notes, bugs, and issues to discuss as we move forward, and I will try to put much more care into how I express things. I’ve been involved in these sorts of projects for over 25 years, and know that my observations, insights and bug reports are frequently welcomed by most projects and their devs. Alas, not without some regretable early misteps like this one seems to have been. I hope you’ll forgive them :slight_smile:

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