So recently I was promoted to leader here on meta and I got to thinking… nothing notified me that I was promoted. I just happened to notice it.
Are we missing an opportunity here? Should be send a system generated PM to the user stating “Congratulations, you’ve been Promoted to X” with the body detailing things they are now able to do under that title?
A “Congratulations! You have been awarded the ___ Badge” PM would add a friendly touch.
Well for badges, I think just a notification would be good. I’m more so wanting to see a PM with Trust Level changes so you know what new authorities you have.
Is that not this?
Clicking the “Regular User” link goes the badge page for it, which says what it grants. That said, I think a PM with an intro to the badge system for the first awarded badge, as well as what they now have access to, would be a good addition.
I didn’t get that for Regular User or Leader. That works well for badges, but doesn’t address my main concern, Trust Level promotions.
There are badges awarded automatically at trust level promotions, and those badges issue notifications.
I never got any notification for either of my trust level promotions… 
I don’t remember getting any Notifications for any awarded badges either. I just noticed them being there. Maybe this has happened since?
I was just recently promoted to Leader, so I doubt it. It is likely broken due to regression.
Anyway, back on topic. I still feel that TL promotions should have a system generated PM sent to the user. This way we can tell them what new privileges their role includes so they can better take care of the community (that is the point to the TLs right?)
I’m going to write up a few samples that may work this week after reviewing the TLs (and what they are allowed to do) again.
Well, its complicated. There is a notification but there is “fork in the code”
At the moment I have a backfill job that does not notify and an inline job that does notify.
The job of the backfill it to fill out any holes in the badge system. Clearly we don’t want to notify every backfilled badge cause we would flood our most precious users with notifications.
So to work around this issue I will get the backfill to notify under certain conditions (badge would have been awarded in last week OR if its a silver and up badge.)
Sorry about the rough edges in the badge system, its a very complicated piece of work.
I have no doubts it is complicated, but I also think, there should be a way (in the future) to associate a PM template with a badge (such as TL2 and TL3). There are great advantages to sending a PM to those users letting them know what new powers they have.
If I simply receive a notification, I guess that “sort of” feels the void (when it works ;)), but it just isn’t the same to me.
I have no problem with a “starting now” solution.
I noticed the Badge and easily found whatever I needed to know about what Features and Settings where different for me now by clicking on the badge.
If the templated emails are close to perfection I’m pleased.
To me reasons for these are twofold
Having good information helps the member, a friendly tone helps the member feel more a part. i.e. a “member” as differentiated from “user”
OK, what I’m saying is, this is important.
@cpradio You got a Notification? Said being a System generated message?
@sam Please ask if there is any way we might help with this. The answer might not be that desired, but do ask.
No, I didn’t I just know others supposedly have. If I had, I imagine the notification links to the badge page which tells you what new features you were given associated to said badge. However, I never got a notification, so therefore I had to figure it out myself (which only happened because I went looking for it).
I still think a system generated PM would be a major win here, and I’ll do my best to help coordinate that. It sounds like @HAWK likes the idea, so it may be something we (being Sitepoint) could investigate, but I can’t commit that, only she can. It may end up on our backlog, but that’s better than not being placed anywhere 
Template PM for Promotion to Basic User (TL 1):
Congratulations [user’s name] on becoming a part of our community. You’ve shown great interest in our community here and as such we’ve granted you a few abilities.
You can now
- Send PMs
- Flag Posts
- Post Images/attachments
- Post more than 2 links
- Mention more than 2 users in a post
- Have links in your About Me profile section
We hope you stick around and become further engaged in tight-knit community here. We’d love to see you progress to the next stage!
Template for Regular User (TL 2):
Congratulations [user’s name] on your promotion to Regular User! You’ve taken off your training wheels and have engaged our community in various aspects. We want to show our appreciation by giving you a few new features that we’re sure you’ll enjoy.
As a regular user, you can now:
- Invite other members to topics
- Invite other members to PMs (creating a group PM)
We look forward to your future contributions and the promotions they may entail.
Template for Leader (TL 3):
Congratulations [user’s name] on becoming a Leader! Your hard work has not gone unnoticed and we are proud to have you as part of our Leadership Team. You will find that this role has granted you a new variety of privileges to help us continue to make this community lively and engaging.
As a Leader you can now
- Re-categorize and rename topics (help us ensure all topics are well defined and in the correct area!)
- Access a private “frequent flier’s lounge” (talk with the rest of the Leadership Team, Staff and Admins)
- All of your links are now “follow” instead of “nofollow” (wohoo!)
Please accept this gesture as a thank you from us to you for the hard work and time you’ve invested in our community. Welcome aboard!
I have been thinking of at least adding a “long description” to the badge details page.
One that teaches people how to get a badge, why its important, how to keep it and so on. The current description is just way too short and spartan.
I’m happy to put it on our list of things to get to after launch, but I can’t allow it to hold us up.
I just came across this thread and like the idea very much - hope it makes it in one of these days.
Unfortunately you can’t rely on me for it (or SitePoint), as I alluded to above. I left that company at the start of the year to take on a new role.
I know I can easily send Promotion PMs through Discourse API, but just wanted to ask if anybody has worked on this feature?
This is now in place for trust level 1 — https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/41f76a74f83ece7c8c97d13f4210f774824a835e
I think it might be better to focus on the badges for tl2 and tl3. In broad strokes, my thinking is that your new users 
need the most encouragement; by the time people make tl2 and tl3 they are already super invested in the community.
