Forum welcome message when somone posts for the first time

[zoonini]

Let's add an on-screen welcome message when someone posts in the forum for the first time.

The forums can be an intimidating place to new community members posting for the very first time.

Let's make them feel welcome and encourage them to stick around by displaying a welcome message, and perhaps a fun little graphic.

A few thoughts for discussion:

• Should the welcome message differ depending whether the user started a topic or made a comment as their first forum contribution? Or should the wording be applicable to both scenarios?

• Comments are often providing help, whereas a topic is usually asking for help, so the context might be different.

• What should the wording be?

• Should we also look into sending out an email? Marius had mentioned that in the past, emails were avoided because enough people marking emails sent via WordPress.org as spam could cause deliverability problems for the whole system.

For further context, see related Slack discussion from a recent Support team meeting, starting here:

​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQC6RW/p1688060501716789

[foosantos]

I love this idea. If we implement this, it would be cool to have it on the Rosetta sites as well.

Comments are often providing help, whereas a topic is usually asking for help, so the context might be different.

I think we should definitely differentiate both.

For helpers (when replying to topic), I believe we could consider adding this:

• Do not show the message if they are replying to their own topic (I don't think it makes sense to show it if they are the OP).
• Add a threshold to avoid it triggering after only 1-2 replies. I would wait for at least 5-10 replies.

Should we also look into sending out an email? Marius had mentioned that in the past, emails were avoided because enough people marking emails sent via WordPress.org as spam could cause deliverability problems for the whole system.

An idea could be to only send the email to helpers (not to folks asking for help).