https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/e6la2u/introducing_the_mod_welcome_message/
created by LanterneRougeOG on 05/12/2019 at 18:27 UTC*
390 upvotes, 46 top-level comments (showing 25)
Hi All,
In August, we ran a pilot with 52 small’ish communities to see if users that received a welcome message when they subscribe to a community, would be more likely to comment and post. We thought a welcome message from the mods would give new subscribers a stronger connection to the mods, a better understanding of the rules, and make them feel more welcomed. This pilot showed that redditors that received a welcome message were 20% more likely to contribute to the community. A big thanks to all the moderators that participated in the pilot and gave us feedback.
Today, based on the learnings of the pilot, we are introducing a new feature for communities with less than 50k subscribers. Mods can now configure a welcome message that will be sent to every new subscriber of your community.
The communities in our August pilot used the welcome message in a variety of ways. Here are some of the ways that you could use it:
Go to your community settings page in the new Reddit mod hub. Under the community description, toggle on “send welcome message to new members.” Then fill out your preferred welcome message. Pro tip: This field supports markdown.
Example of the new field in community settings
​
And here is how the message will show up in their inbox:
​
The primary criteria for having access to this feature is your subscriber count. We are starting by only allowing communities with less than 50k subscribers to send a welcome message. If you have this feature enabled and you grow above 50k subscribers we won’t turn it off. You’ll continue to have access to it.
We are open to raising this threshold, but we wanted to start on the smaller side to ensure that everything is working properly before we scale to larger communities.
That’s all. Let us know if you have any questions.
Comment by 4InchesOfury at 05/12/2019 at 19:17 UTC*
21 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So during the onboarding process of creating a new account you can subscribe to a whole bunch of subreddits really quickly. Would this lead to being messaged by all of them at once if they all had welcome messages on?
Comment by MajorParadox at 05/12/2019 at 19:11 UTC
37 upvotes, 2 direct replies
This is really cool!
Is there a max limit to the message? Or just the max for any normal PM message? 10,000 characters, I think?
Will there be a way for us to report bad welcome messages?
The ability to send yourself a test message is coming soon
What happens if we leave and rejoin? Also, might be worth considering firing when adding to a custom feed too (if not already joined).
Comment by TheChrisD at 05/12/2019 at 18:40 UTC
14 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Redditors can disable these messages by disabling welcome messages under notifications on their settings page
For those looking, it's the last option in the first heading of "inbox notification".
Although, why control over a *private message* is in the **notifications** tab, and not the **chat & messaging** tab is beyond me.
Comment by db2 at 05/12/2019 at 19:29 UTC
13 upvotes, 2 direct replies
The real question is how much more likely does it make it they'll actually ever glance at the sidebar?
Comment by overscore_ at 05/12/2019 at 19:20 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Do you have more granular stats for effectiveness? Specifically, I'm wondering if the messages were more or less effective based on length. Do longer, more detailed messages spark more contribution, or short and sweet? Maybe a happy medium?
Comment by _ihavemanynames_ at 05/12/2019 at 18:35 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This is a great idea, thank you! Can’t wait for it to be available for bigger subs as well.
Comment by [deleted] at 05/12/2019 at 19:46 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Seems like this would be used for the same sort of information currently placed in both the sidebar/about screen and in sticky/pinned/announcement posts. However, even with those it's difficult to get new users to actually read them. So this is a third way. Shotgun approach. :)
Comment by Georgy_K_Zhukov at 06/12/2019 at 17:08 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This sounds very cool. I hope there are plans to roll it out to larger communities though, as those are the ones where it is much harder to socialize new users to subreddit norms.
If you are going to be testing this out in any way with larger ones, please consider /r/AskHistorians as one of the subreddits to try it out with, as this is something we would absolutely kill to have, given the strict rules about participation and contributions.
On a related side note, I remember there being talk about a subreddit newsletter feature being under development. Is that separate, or is this basically what that feature has morphed into, as there is obviously considerable similarity? And if the former, what is the status on that project? It is also something we've been eager to hear more updates on.
Comment by rbevans at 05/12/2019 at 18:41 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I like this! This is the way.
Comment by vekstthebest at 05/12/2019 at 18:42 UTC
4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Interesting idea! Now to just figure out what to put..
Comment by DrippyWaffler at 05/12/2019 at 18:45 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Excellent idea!
Comment by tizorres at 05/12/2019 at 19:05 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Oh, this is cool.
Comment by Sir_Fuzzums at 05/12/2019 at 20:45 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Cool! Is this for all subs under 50k or just the safe for work subreddits under 50k?
Comment by jofwu at 05/12/2019 at 21:08 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Are there plans to increase the subscriber limit after you know the bugs are worked out and everything is going smoothly, or is that limit something that potentially won't change.
I'm really excited for this and would LOVE to have the feature in r/Stormlight_Archive, which is at 83k. It's a subreddit dedicated to a book series, which means we see sharp bumps in subscriber growth around book releases and updates. The author sends a lot of people our way who aren't always familiar with Reddit, so it would be nice to use this message as a sort of onboarding process for those who click the subscribe button...
Comment by [deleted] at 05/12/2019 at 21:43 UTC
4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Well darn. Us at r/angryupvote loved this feature (except my stupid typo) and now we can't edit it still since we are greater than 50K members! (Btw will people still get our message? Its not in the settings so idk)
Comment by Jackimatic at 06/12/2019 at 00:41 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Dead keen for this. We have 55k subs, and this would be very helpful. Sub rule abuse is a major problem and I am forever reminding new member to observe the sub rules. This would be incredibly helpful
Comment by AgentPeggyCarter at 05/12/2019 at 20:13 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Are those of us that exclusively use the old Reddit and opt out of the redesign able to use this feature?
Comment by SecretSquirrel_ at 06/12/2019 at 02:09 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Are there plans for something similar to be implemented when users are added as approved submitters to private communities?
Comment by littlemisfit at 06/12/2019 at 09:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That would be a great way to introduce people to the rules, since no one seems to read the side-bar. I hope you roll it out to larger subs soon, because I'm really getting tired of the constant rule violations.
Comment by Redbiertje at 06/12/2019 at 09:42 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Just in time to win the Best New Reddit Feature of 2019 award!
Comment by Bhima at 06/12/2019 at 11:34 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is this only available in the redesign?
Comment by eric_twinge at 06/12/2019 at 15:18 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We thought a welcome message from the mods would give new subscribers a stronger connection to the mods, a better understanding of the rules, and make them feel more welcomed.
I get that you guys have technical limitations here, but it strikes me that the larger subs getting 1000s of new subscribers a day are the one in need of this.
Smaller subs with less activity and goings on are much easier to get a handle on compared to a huge sub with lots of moving parts and rules.
Comment by [deleted] at 08/12/2019 at 12:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I've made one for my sub, but I can't seem to see if its working. I made an alt for a test and no message is coming through.
Any chance one of ye kind souls could join r/CasualIreland, just for a sec, and see if the message pops up? I wanted to see if it came out right!
Comment by Blank-Cheque at 05/12/2019 at 19:35 UTC*
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
API notes:
The only thing they haven't done is add a field for it to the edit page on old reddit. The value is visible in https://old.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/about/edit.json[1] just like the other features they aren't holding hostage. You can edit the values using the regular API just like you would any other subreddit setting.
1: https://old.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/about/edit.json
`welcome_message_enabled` is a boolean value corresponding to, you guessed it, whether the message is enabled. `welcome_message_text` is either null or a string value corresponding to the text of your welcome message. It's only null if you have never had a welcome message; once you turn on welcome messages it will become a string and I haven't found a way to make it null again. `welcome_message_text` is also stored in https://www.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/wiki/config/welcome_message[2], but editing this page does not seem to update the value in the settings.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/wiki/config/welcome_message
So for example, if you're using PRAW you can do something like
reddit.subreddit('SUBREDDIT').mod.update(
welcome_message_enabled=True,
welcome_message_text='please roll a d5 and if it lands on 5, participate in this community. thanks.'
)
If you try to do this on a subreddit with over 50k subscribers, it'll give you an `INVALID_OPTION` error.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Comment by kidkolumbo at 05/12/2019 at 19:23 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Really excited. Would've been nice to have it before the black Friday sale season, but I'm happy to have it nonetheless.