Post notices for first-time and returning users

To encourage kindness towards users who are posting for the first time or may not have posted in a while we’ve created a new feature that calls special attention to these new/returning users.

These banners are visible to other users, but not the poster they apply to… and by default are only visible to community members who have been active enough to achieve Trust Level 2.

Here’s what they look like:

How can I configure this feature?

Admins can adjust these options in their site settings

  • new user notice tl This controls the trust level of who can see the new user notice, the default is TL2.
  • returning user notice tl This controls the trust level of who can see the returning user notice, the default is TL2.
  • returning users days This controls when a user is considered to be a returning user, the default is 120 days.
  • old post notice days This controls when we remove the background color and deemphasize the notice, the default is 14 days.

If you’d like to change the text of these notices you can do so under admin > customize > text content (Search for post.notice).

How do I disable this feature?

You can either raise the trust level to Trust Level 4 (TL4 is only awarded manually). Or you can add CSS to hide these banners under admin > customize > themes

This CSS will hide both types

.post-notice {
  display: none;
}

or optionally you can hide individual types of notices:

.post-notice.new-user {
  display: none;
}

.post-notice.returning-user {
  display: none;
}

.post-notice.old {
  display: none;
}
60 Likes

These notices are awesome, thank you!

6 Likes

This is a great feature, but it’d be even better if we could not have these notices show up on certain topics. We have an introduce yourself topic and the first time poster notice adds a lot of noise.

4 Likes

You can hide them using the topic id :wink:

[data-topic-id="1234"] .post-notice {
  display: none;
}
21 Likes

How about hiding on topics with specific tag?

2 Likes

I don’t think that’s possible right now.

@maja, do you think you can do your :sparkles: and add one class per tag in the topic view (everywhere we show the category-* class if that’s easy enough)?

10 Likes

This is :sparkles:fantastic!:sparkles: After this feature was implemented, it sure did encourage our members to start welcoming new users! This helps our new users be encouraged to keep chatting! I’ve probably seen no new users not being welcomed, which is great! Great job Team Discourse!

13 Likes

Some amazing results as well. Here’s a returning user from 2013 :exploding_head:

Also definitely interesting when someone’s returning post is a PM as well.

10 Likes

Via css, it’s easy to hide the notice. If we use @awesomerobot guide in the first post and add the class .private_message, it should work.

I didn’t try it, but there’s no reason not to

.private_message .post-notice {
  display: none;
}
3 Likes

Just a heads up: some languages (e.g. romanian) doesn’t have a generic pronoun (like their), therefore you’re stuck with using a translation of either he or she.

Maybe this functionality need to be disabled by default on non-english forums?

Probably better to look at a different line than to disable a feature entirely.

3 Likes

Some would argue that English doesn’t either. The other solution is to use something like “he or she”.

3 Likes

We don’t capture gender to determine that. Talking to a Romanian colleague though, they insisted there were ways around this.

I think at this point most people making that argument in regard to English are doing so in bad faith.

This is a problem that has been discussed a bit more in other topics, including Gender and translations — Is it correct to say that Slavic languages fall into similar issues as other languages discussed where gender is often built-in to the language?

6 Likes

I’m on your side. I’m not convinced that it’s bad faith, though.

Admittedly, I am an Old White Guy, but I’m pretty far ahead of lots of Old White Guys on such issues. It wasn’t that long ago that I assiduously he/shed and/or (s)hed my way through a bunch of academic writing and the singular they wasn’t in the stuff I was reading a mere ten years ago, even by feminists who wouldn’t capitalize their names.

While those other Old White Guys are wrong, I’m not convinced that it’s bad faith. Oh, but you said most. So you’re right. :wink:

8 Likes

Oh absolutely, I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t. I was trying to express that it’s a solved issue not really worth discussing with English, but there are a bunch of complexities with other languages where nouns and verb tenses carry gender so swapping in a single word isn’t always possible.

8 Likes

In many languages, gender isn’t so tightly linked to sex as it is in English. In French, for example, if you refer to a man as “une personne,” you use the feminine gender as long as “personne” is the focus. To return to referring to him as “il,” you have to use some masculine noun. It is not the person’s sex that determines, but the word’s gender. As Saki puts in the mouth of one of his characters, “French is a most dreadfully unsexing language!”

7 Likes

Indeed, slavic languagages have that (and many other problems) as well.
Also, In Czech we have 7 declension types which makes software translations (with variables in particular) challenging, to say the least.

Romans with their five declensions had it much easier:

(sorry for off-topic)

10 Likes

There is no generic pronoun in Romanian and I believe no other Romanic languages have it either. :frowning:

The good part is that the messages can be somewhat rephrased to not include the gender:

E prima oara cand %{user} a postat. Bine a venit!

* It’s first time %{user} has posted. Welcome!

A trecut ceva timp de cand %{user} a fost activ - ultimul mesaj trimis a fost pe %{date}.

* It’s been a while since %{user} was active - last message was sent on %{date}.

11 Likes

I would agree if the notice is also posted if the same user who just posted a PM then also post in the public forum. Is this the case?