I agree completely. This one of the strengths of Facebook – and also, as it’s an “all-in-one” platform, even group members who are not very active in the group are likely to be active enough on Facebook in general that they feel comfortable with the familiar interface.
This is one of the reasons I’m planning to do this with DMs and automation. I also want automation to “find” users who have a certain profile (e.g. not giving insulin to their cat yet) who haven’t posted in a while to send them a DM to see how things are going. I think that between automation and groups to “sort” users there is a way to make “content-nudges” like this work.
When it comes to using Discourse, I think the same can be applied, but this will only work with people who have managed to make an account.
Sad to hear that! I don’t know if you read my (too long, I agree) topic Migrating from Facebook: specific challenges, and some thoughts – I really think that looking at how we “fail” to migrate people from Facebook can be a good tool to see how to make Discourse simpler to get started with, both for community builders and members.
Yes. I’m in the process of trying to tidy up as well as I can so that people don’t get scared when they first arrive. I think there is a case for a kind of “bare-bones” theme for newbie members which simply hides a lot of the functionality, and which can be then “switched” to a theme giving access to everything once people are comfortable enough. There’s a bunch of stuff I’d remove if I try to think of an “easy experience” for new users from Facebook.