Hello, I'm sorry to post this as my first post but I felt compounded to portray my first experience.
I have to agree with the original poster on this issue. Having embarked on upon the registration rigmarole which to be fair when compared with other forums I frequent it was relatively painless which is great, but I was then greeted with the below text:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Wildaboutbritain.co.uk - Welcome Message Thank you, Surrey Sam. Your registration is now complete.
You may now proceed to edit your Profile in order to fill in additional personal details about yourself, or you could modify your Options to customize your browsing experience of this site. If you would rather do these things later, you can do so by following the links around the site to your User Control Panel.
Alternatively, you can simply go back to the Forums and start posting in threads. |
The blue parts are clickable links which if you follow the Profile and Options links, give you the message wherein detailing about having to the post on the forum 25 times before the privilege is gained. To some, it could be conceived as quite perturbing thus leaving a new user confused, having a negative experience from the beginning of their possible WAB participation. This may be compounded even further by the users who are not particularly
"au fait" with the Internet - for example:
When I first found a forum that took my interest some 9 years ago, I didn't even join for the first year. Instead I read and followed the contributors posts quite content in learning and familiarising myself with this new phenomenon where faceless experiences could be shared in an almost real time environment. After that initial period I decided to then join the forum and it still took me nearly a second year to reach 30 posts.
Since that time I've obviously 'come out of my shell' so to speak, as I'm not as shy compared to what I once was which some certainly may depict from this initial post. The management in my humble opinion should carefully consider altering the first welcome message as it is not positive or comforting, which is what this should be trying to achieve.