I have a few long topics where newbies can post their questions. Yet I want to make sure that long time members don’t get annoyed by evergreen questions. Although I advice members to read the first topic and read the resources there first, many still rather opt for asking their question instead. So far I haven’t found a user-friendly way or incentive to point them to a beginner article or FAQ.
How about a feature to configure a lightbox prompt when the user hits a “New Topic” or “Reply” button?
That way you can provide a short text and a few links for the user to point him to helpful resources.
I have multiple topics each with hundreds of posts where beginners (tl0) can post their questions.
Often those questions have been answered before. Hence we have FAQs which I want to point to. I see the user action of creating a new reply as the best time and place to provide him those resources.
Another use case is a quiz-like tool on my wordpress page. There ppl can self-diagnose what’s wrong with their plant. The link to the tool is in the first post. Hence new users often don’t see that the link is there and rather post a question “what’s wrong with my plant…” instead of using the tool.
With the prompt for replying to the topic the first time I can make sure that they have seen the tool available and use it before replying
In addition a topic-specific prompt can advise the user to put in crucial information about their case so that other users can actually give them advice (although a topic-specific template would be more helpful here)
