Discobot is a fun upgrade to the original Discourse Private Messaging welcome screen. Each new visitor is offered the chance to interact or “play” the Discourse game with Discobot. This interaction teaches them how to use Discourse by interacting with Discobot the same way they would a real person.
Discobot has a lot of personality in the community.lsst.org forum, including a profile which is customized for our site, and can offer assistance when you need it – but that is not all.
Discobot will reply when you mention @discobot in any category or topic, or when you send a private message to @discobot (instructions below). You can start by typing “@discobot display help” to see all the things you can do with Discobot, or you can type the following commands:
- @discobot start tutorial
- @discobot start advanced tutorial
- @discobot roll 2d6
- @discobot quote
- @discobot fortune (my personal favorite)
If you take the tutorial and advanced tutorial, you have the opportunity to earn two badges: “Certified” when you complete the new user tutorial, and “Licensed” when you complete the advanced user tutorial. You can also repeat either tutorial in case you forget how to use the system, or if you are totally bored and want to have a meaningful relationship with an AI.
Tutorial Contents
The basic tutorial (~5 minutes) provides users with links to more information about trust levels, badges, forum staff, and community guidelines, and covers forum features such as bookmarks and keyword searches; user mentions (@-ing people); using formatted text, emojis, links, images, and quotes in posts; and how to flag an inappropriate post. The advanced tutorial (~10 minutes) covers editing, deleting, and undeleting posts; referencing categories and tags; user settings like how to watch topics or categories; how to embed polls into your posts; and how to use the “hide text” function.
Instructions for Messaging Discobot
How to send a message to @discobot: To navigate to your message inbox, click on your profile picture in the upper right corner, then on your user name, and then on Messages. To start talking to @discobot, choose “New Message”, fill out the fields as below, and click “Message”.
