I just updated our Discourse instance to 2.3.0.beta4. Full release notes are here. The biggest user facing change is:
Special call-out for new / returning posters.
A banner message appears when a new or a user who hasn’t posted in 2 months posts to encourage those users to continue to post.
What is the rationale for the call-out message?
Is it possible that the forum posting this could serve to embarrass users more than help them? I mean a new user will usually make it clear if he wants to make his welcome public, same with returning users. We need to be cautious in this type of thing to avoid the feeling of the forum trying to nag people into certain actions.
Also, a potential minefield is opened up when automated pronoun usage comes in (it shouldn’t be controversial, but the world today is finding it in even the most benign places).
Most platforms anymore try to be active instead of passive. They attempt to nag certain behaviors or automatically do what it thinks you want (in that it knows better, etc). For example gmail recently trying to automatically generate suggested replies to emails or complaining that a sent email has not yet been replied to and placing it back in the inbox with a nag message. Or this forum software for example, if I start a new topic, it always complains that my topic is similar to another topic because its only point of reference is a dumb keyword search with no context… “TOOL, UTILITY, OR PLATFORM, GET OUTTA MY WAY OR GTFO!”
Personally I would disable this “call-out” because it adds nothing of value to the topic and an unnecessary distracting break. I saw this earlier already while reading through some posts and thought “WTF is this for?” What do I care if somebody has not been on here for a couple of months.
Not required information.
This was missing from the announcement: These notices are not shown to these users themselves, but only to a small group of experienced/active users, to help them feel welcomed or get to know the etiquette of this forum. In our case we have about 1200 ‘Trust Level 2’ users who will see this notice. It’s not shown to the new/returning users themselves.
Not ‘complaining’, but trying to get people to post to an existing topic if that exists, reducing work for moderators who might otherwise have to later merge those topics.
Yes, i’d like to have “call outs” removed or have an option to disable it. For now, I feel/ see it as a clutter, obstructing fluent reading, breaking mental, intellectual focus. Maybe at a later time i’ll find some value in it, but for now it feels just like there’s a mentally challenged kid throwing stones in a pond to show me where fish swim.
