Forum:Discord onboarding

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Hi friends, today I am bringing forward a discussion on what the new user experience for our discord should be. This is a relatively new system called onboarding. In short, this allows us to do a few things:

• Make new users agree to rules before they can talk or DM
• Set up a default selection of channels a user can see, and hide irrelevant channels
  • Hidden public channels (i.e. don't require a role to see) can be unhidden in the 'browse channels' section - you can do this yourself now, there's just none hidden by default
• Ask a new user questions upon joining, which can be tied to giving them roles or unhiding other channels (pre-join questions)
• Allow post-join questions so everyone can add/remove channels and roles from themselves

This addresses a few concerns:

• The new user experience is overwhelming - you get 29 total channels when you first join the server. It's just too many. A smaller number of default channels helps the server not feel crazy complicated, but they're still easily accessible without having to role-gate them.
• Post-join questions allow users to manage roles themselves, removing our need to have a reaction role bot. Dyno is great, but it is nice to remove the middle man.
• Pre-join questions can allow users to select the right channel for them right away
• Rules agreement can make sure users know the server rules, and more importantly, reduce DM spammers (in theory)

As this is a few parts, my initial suggestion has a few parts.

Rules

I don't think this is necessary, so I haven't set any. I think the only benefit would really be reducing DM spammers, but I don't know how effective it is at that - it's really only a checkbox and a button in the way. We don't really get them that often nowadays anyway.

Default channels

Requirements: At least 7 channels, at least 5 of which @everyone can read and send messages

I suggest:

• All uncategorised channels:
  • #welcome
  • #announcements
• Several from the wiki category:
  • #wiki-rs
  • #wiki-osrs
  • #meta-discussion
  • #wiki-tech
• All of the public general category:
  • #general
  • #rs
  • #osrs
• The report bad ads category:
  • #report-bad-ads

This is 10 total channels, 8 of which are everyone-chattable. I think this covers the most important and popular channels that a new user may want, and avoids overwhelming new users.

Here are a few images of how this looks on a 1080p and a half-1080p window https://imgur.com/a/TiAWwbS.

Pre-join questions

I couldn't come up with good questions to ask without them also getting in the way, so I have suggest no pre-join questions. I personally am not a fan of them when I join other servers. If we add them they should definitely not be required.

Post-join questions

For post-join questions there's a few options on what to do, but I decided to go with two: replacing reaction roles and quickly toggling some channels. The questions and functions are:

1. Add some roles to yourself:
   • API consumer (adds api-consumer role)
   • Off-topic (adds offtopic role)
   • Wiki Events Notifications (adds notif-events role)
   • Archives (adds archive-reader role)
   • RS3 Drop Log Project (adds droplets role)
   • Wiki account linking (adds a role that will trigger gazbot to begin the linking process, not yet implemented)
2. Quick show/hide other channels
   • RuneScape (toggles #rs, #wiki-rs, #recent-changes-rs, and some projects)
   • Old School RuneScape (toggles #osrs, #wiki-osrs, #recent-changes-osrs, and some projects)
   • RuneScape PT-BR (toggles #wiki-pt-br, #recent-changes-pt-br)
   • RuneScape Classic (toggles #wiki-rsc, #recent-changes-rsc)
   • Projects (toggles all of the project category)
   • Bots (toggles all of the bots category)
   • Voice (toggles all of the voice category)

Here's some images of the customise menu with these questions https://imgur.com/a/gXWey3T.

Other changes

Welcome

If the above is implemented, it would be worth re-doing the first message in #welcome (can't be edited as it is an embed), and completely deleting the role assignment message. My suggestion is mostly be the same, but remove the clan and OSWF sections, then reword the opt-in roles section to something like:

In this server we offer several roles that you can opt-in to. You can manage them, and show/hide channels, in the **Channels & Roles** button above the channel list.

(Note that the 'Browse channels' button will automatically become 'Channels & Roles' with onboarding set up.)

Roles

It is with reviewing if we want the off-topic and archive roles to be required for viewing those channels; users could alternatively add/remove the channels via post-join questions or browse channels. I'm not strongly for or against removing the roles from either, though.

Discussion

I'm open to changes or not implementing this at all - I want to hear comments and stuff. Love, Gaz (talk) 02:00, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Gaz it's Logg. We implemented Discord's "Onboarding" feature in a server I manage, and found that even with an @everyone ping, very few of our thousands of users actually opted-in to any roles, many of which were necessary to interact and chat in the server at all. Roughly 15% of users engaged with the "Channels & Roles" feature of Discord, and we had messages for weeks asking "Where did the xxxxxxx channel go?", and users assuming they were deleted. We still have the Onboarding structure for new users (it is pretty slick), but ended up giving all existing users a role that lets them continue to view All Channels like before. I would say that unless Discord improves the Onboarding feature to retroactively make the "Post Join Questions" appear to existing users who have not interacted with the server since the feature was enabled, it is not a discoverable feature, and should not be used as the only mechanism to let people view or hide channels. —Logg^(talk) 20:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah that's certainly a concern. Gaz (talk) 22:25, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Comment - On the Rules section, is this about server rules and then agreeing to them? If so, I think saying that we basically have the game's rules as ours, and maybe a brief rehash of them for quick reference, plus a couple of other things that are kind of common sense but also not explicitly Jagex rules (ie: no pornographic images). Badassiel 22:52, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Essentially yeah, when you join you'd be presented with server rules and have to agree to them before you can see the server or send messages. My main concern is it being a barrier between clicking join and chatting, which in the past we try to minimise. Gaz (talk) 22:25, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Soft support? - I think the suggestions are all good, especially like the Post-join questions point to help filter out by what game versions the user plays. I am concerned by what Logg mentioned about existing server users being disorientated by the changes though. Isobel talk page 15:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Support per following:

1. Rules - Support no rules agreement. Gatekeeping is not necessary - if we somehow get a huge spam problem, we can revisit.
2. Default channels - Support suggested default channels. I would also recommend adding a 'necromancy' channel in Projects for the upcoming release and have it as a default channel. For major events, I would recommend adding project channels for both RS3 and OSRS (think Trailblazer) and add them as default while the event is fresh, and switching to non-default/archive as they end.
3. Pre-join questions - Support no pre-join questions - seem comment on gatekeeping. This just keeps users from engaging
4. Post-join questions - Support both suggestions.

Hephaestus 15:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Support all except default channels - I think this will be super confusing and doesn't really have much benefit. ʞooɔ 15:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)