Introduce Yourself - User Engagement

I am interested in and was just thinking bout the Introduce yourself section of the forum.

There are a lot of people posting in there and regularly (I think we are up past 9K+ total users in the forum) but not so many of those users that post an introduction are then posting again in other parts of the forum from what I can see.

Wondering what others think of actively engaging a little better by allowing current users to post replies in there?

Currently new users post a comment but no current user can reply and say welcome.

My thinking is that if a new user perhaps says what they are interested in, where they come from other users can comment and engage in discussion “oh hi X, I am from X too, I too am interested in X…”

But of course that could easily derail the thread. That’s obvious.

Another idea would be to perhaps do a weekly summary of new users?

What other way’s can we engage with the new users on this forum?

Thank you

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I agree that it may derail the thread, but I’m not too sure if this would be a good idea, mostly because I assume that most people that come here come for privacy reasons, and getting battered by a variety of personal questions seems kind of strange then.

Then again, I never use or get the point of those threads any way so… maybe?

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I agree with you but we do need to do our best to engage with these folks. We have a healthy growing community and we need to feed it.

The people are what will make this thing work. Nothing else.

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I think we need to look at this again.

It feels weird and to have folk introduce themselves, and then get no response. Quite cold, and not really a nice welcome to the forum.

Perhaps we could just enforce the on-topic more closely there? If it turns into debates about things, then they get moved. But it would be nice if we could responsed and say welcome, and point people in the right place to post questions, or direct them to get involved where their experience would be welcome.

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I write to all newly registered users and answer their questions. Not everyone wants to go public, but in short, my goal is to invite them to participate in the forum:


Privacy. Security. Freedom

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Aye, but what I mean is, we are publicly ignoring the newcomers that have posted in the introduce yourself thread as a matter of policy. It seems unfriendly to me, especially as they have taken the time to go into some detail. And theses are the people who are happy to announce announce their arrival publicly.

At the beginning of the topic it is written that we do not allow comments in it. It is unlikely that the average intelligent person will feel ignored if they read that.

Plus no one has complained for several years and the fact that there are people who open new topics or get involved in other topics shows, in my opinion, that there is no problem with the specific topic of self-introduce.


Privacy. Security. Freedom

I agree it could appear unfriendly. The upside is that you have a topic which is useful for anyone wanting to learn about who is here which is not full of mundane replies and discussions that get in the way of that.

Do we know how people arriving here experience that thread, whether they find it useful, discouraging, encouraging etc? (Before and if they post an intro, afterwards).

Everyone receives two notifications for the first received like of the post and a second notification when ten likes are reached. All this posts in the introduce yourself topic reach 10 likes… This shows how friendly this community is really :love:


Privacy. Security. Freedom

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Yes and no. Not so much when no one replies. New people do not feel left out if they get no responses.

Now maybe we can set up a sub-category under Beginners for introductions and prople create a topic just for themselves and convos can be had. This may get noisy or it may be just great.

Jim - maybe you could setup a poll to see if others feel it is unwelcoming or not.