While I definitely like the overall approach used for this site’s tutorial, actually starting it is a little counter-intuitive right now due to some minor problems with the wording of a couple of Magnemite’s automated messages. For one, the welcome message automatically sent by Magnemite doesn’t exactly spell out bookmarking the message will trigger a tutorial.
Yes, it’s pretty easy to figure out if you know what you’re looking for, but someone who’s just joined the forums is already likely to be a little lost and confused, so I believe being as direct and explicit as possible about the fact a tutorial is being offered is a wise idea.
Meanwhile, this here is at the bottom of the final tutorial section:
Likewise, I kind of glazed over this thinking it was fluff initially. Perhaps it could be changed to more specifically mention messaging the bot will prompt you with a list of possible commands? (As well as directly provide the @magnemite display help command instead of make the user send 2 different messages to achieve the same result)
And speaking of commands offered by the bot, after using the display help command, this pops up:
This list is written kind of strangely in my opinion, as if it’s giving you the syntax for individual commands when it’s actually providing examples without actually telling you the syntax at all.
Take the tutorial command, for example:
The implication here seems to be “send me @magnemite start tutorial to start the tutorial or advanced tutorial” but in reality typing that will just immediately start the basic tutorial. You need to use @magenmite start advanced tutorial to start the advanced tutorial.
With all that in mind, I propose the following revisions to the welcome, end of tutorial, and help messages
Welcome message
End of basic tutorial
Help display
Great suggestions! I’ve gone ahead and applied these. Feel free to give it a whirl.
This one required taking some creative liberties with the phrasing in order to prevent a future update from causing confusion.
Technical Explanation
The tutorial types are stored in one variable called %{tracks}. The default track, “tutorial”, has its own variable; the advanced one, for some reason, does not. So while it’s possible to add a second line for @magnemite start advanced tutorial, there’s no guarantee that text will be 100% accurate 1 month, 1 year, 3 years down the line. Etc.
Unfortunately, I think version of the help message is actually even harder to parse and just as likely to have a user accidentally re-start the basic tutorial again.
The entire message for context:
And the section I think is still problematic:
Is it possible to do something similar to what the roll command was changed to?
Example:
This way it fits in better with what’s below it instead of sticking out like a sore thumb, but if a concern is that you might rename the advanced tutorial later on, I’ll have to think of something else.
Also, on another note:
I think I found some text that wasn’t edited when you reskinned our bot friend to Magnemite.
There’s no %{advanced_track} otherwise this would be simple and straightforward.
I could add the suggested text regardless but then we’re relying on the name of the advanced tutorial never changing. I’d prefer a way to phrase this using what’s available, but if there’s no wording that’s easier to parse we might as well take the chance on it anyway.
Alright, so I think the wall we’re running into here stems from the current tutorial names, if I understand correctly. In that case, step one might be to rename “tutorial” to “basic tutorial”. Then, from how I understand the variables are set up, we can make it display something like this:
Hopefully that should be both more readable, and can call from those variables to ensure it’s better future-proofed?
