Originally Posted by Flyertall

Well, as a newbie, I just registered. And the directions I was given at the top of the first page I logged into, the moment I verified my email, was to come to "Information Desk" first. I dutifully did, and found this Information Desk thread, and posted. If every newbie is presented with the same initial page that I was when I joined today, then that might explain the nature of some of the questions found here.

Anyway, I look forward to learning how to fly here.

Originally Posted by 84fiero

While I was at my folks last night I had my mother sign up for a new account as I was curious what exactly a brand new user sees after reading the above and your quoted text.

After getting through the email confirmation link process, she ended up with the entire forum tree displayed, but also with this message at the top of the page:



(the Information Desk was hyperlinked in the actual message)

On the one hand the forum tree is present and the message encourages the newcomer to take the time to become familiar with FT. OTOH it also says "start....at the Information Desk".

I think your suggestion to perhaps replace a link to begin at the Information Desk forum in general, with a link to that sticky, is worthwhile. Perhaps some other minor tweaking of the welcome message would be in order to go along with that? Maybe something along the lines of...



Just brainstorming. I think the welcome message shouldn't be too long or it may not be read, but a message that is more direct about encouraging folks to look for a specific relevant forum might help.

Originally Posted by jackal

Interesting. I was told by the forum administrators that they could redirect the user to a specific thread but not a specific forum, and so they had programmed it to dump all new users into this:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...tion-desk.html

I never did test it myself to see if that's what was happening. Thanks for reporting your findings.