I remember seeing something in one of the intro documents when I first started using this community site, talking about inviting users to the forum. How do we do that? Or is that a feature that isn’t available yet and will be added later?
You can try poking it with a stick. We can perhaps already do this, perhaps not, but it’d be nice I guess to wait for Memrise to make the announcement.
The forum now perhaps needs, besides time to implement changes, savvy users who like and are good at user experience testing, and perhaps have a high sound to noise ratio. Maybe you know some or we can recommend some here?
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I can understand why you are unclear. This is not explicitly written anywhere.
In order to unlock the Invite Users feature, you must reach Trust Level 3: Regular.
Once you reach level 3, an invite button will be available at the bottom of topics and also on your user page.
The reason why this requires Trust Level 3 is because when inviting a user to reply to a topic, an email will be sent to them including the ability to let that person visit the topic and post a reply without explicitly logging in. Their first post will auto-register them.
Please also note that inviting someone through your profile page will permanently attach them to your profile. So if they end up misbehaving, that will reflect on your account. The positive side of this, is that if the user becomes a notable member within the forms, you are able to show off the fact that you invited a great contributor.
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Hi @iamwillow,
I have just tried inviting two trusted friends to a topic but get a message that I can’t.
I am trying to invite people who are not already involved but have been active on Forums of courses I have supported and will want to be aware of the new procedure.
I see that this would be classed as a “Campaigner” but I can’t seem to find out how to invite them.
Details here http://community.memrise.com/badges/26/campaigner
According to the badges page, I have “Regular” (and also “Leader”, which is the next one above Regular). Yet I cannot find these “invite” buttons, either at the bottom of topics (like right here) or on my user page. Where exactly are they and what do they look like?
@cos, That’s odd because, when I look, it shows you as ‘basic’ level and that’s where I think your problem lies:
I’ve also had a look at your badge stats and, for the trust level ones, that also only shows the ‘basic’ one. Can I suggest that you write to one of the Admins to get your previous levels reinstated? That should fix things regarding access to the invite button. Good luck!
@TinyCaterpillar, @DW7, @iamwillow,
I haven’t tried the ‘invite’ function yet but, on checking, I’m told that it should work with either ‘username’ for people already on the forum or with ‘email address’ for those who are not…unless the Memrise Admins have set it up differently here.
I guess there’s only one way to find out. If you don’t mind, I’ll try inviting the three of you to something on the forum to see what happens. Stand by! 
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@TinyCaterpillar, @DW7, @iamwillow,
Update. It seemed to work from this end for both @TinyCaterpillar and @DW7 but when I tried to invite @iamwillow, I got this rejection message:
It looks like there is a limit of two invites per item (or per session).
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Thanks for testing it out, @alanh. I got this on my end, along with a notification email:
So I guess the basic function is to call a certain user’s attention to a topic without using the ‘@’ mention in the post? I guess I could see it being handy for something like a course forum when trying to get a contributor’s input. It makes me wonder why it’s limited only to Regulars and up though.
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Thanks for letting me know. 
I guess the limitation is some kind of spammer deterrent. Looking at the badges area, the invite function can be used to invite ‘fresh blood’ to the site (‘Campaigner’) and (‘Champion’).
Hi @alanh thank you very much for trying - I have two comments:
- I assumed that the badge was for people in the forum inviting people who are NOT in the forum at the moment. I am keen to do this as I have some people I have helped and who would want to stay in touch.
http://community.memrise.com/badges/26/campaigner
- The message I got was the same as you got for all three people I tried - using their other ID and adding the @ symbol, which is what happens once someone joins (ie it wasn’t a limit thing for me in that case).
So I have asked admin how do invite people into the Forum who haven’t found it yet and are unaware what will happen at the end of the month.
Thanks @tinycaterpillar, I’ll try it without the “@” symbol!
Except of course you are already in the Forum.
I think the thing to remember is that this forum is an ‘off the shelf’ open source platform which Memrise has adopted and bolted onto its own site. The forum’s functions are common to all those who use it, whether or not they are Memrise users. The invite button should therefore work whether you use a person’s Memrise username or their email address (eg if they are not yet Memrise users). I had that confirmed.by the platform Admin people before I posted this morning.
There are three badges linked to the use of the invite button: Promoter, Campaigner and Champion. They all seem to be aimed at bringing fresh blood to the forum community and the various levels are differentiated by how many new people come to the forum as a result of the invitation, how long they hang around for and how active they are.
I chose to ‘invite’ three existing Memrise users who were expressing an interest in the invite function simply to test the functionality among people who were interested in how it worked, rather than risk confusing ‘innocent bystanders’. I will leave it to you to cast your net wider.
When I sent my three invitations today, I used the @TinyCaterpillar, @DW7 and @iamwillow usernames ie with the @ symbol. On sending the first two, I got a pop-up message saying the invitation had been sent but for @iamwillow, I got the “sorry…” message copied above, which seems to me to clearly indicate that three ecxeeded the limit.
I can only suggest that you keep trying to send invitations, while you wait for the Memrise Admin people to respond. In the meantime, a shortcut would be to post a message (with a link) in the old course forum (while it still exists) so that the people you want to keep in touch can be sure to find their way here before any wider publicity is given to this forum by the Memrise people. Good luck!
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Good tip @alanh I guess I am moving closer to the day for creating threads for my courses and posting the links on my description area but as I have said before I really need some more space - failing all else a partial solution, I’ll follow @risgrynsgrot’s suggestion and post it in an intro multimedia level.
Incidentally I have invited @risgrynsgrot successfully - I hope he/ you doesn’t/ don’t mind.
PS EDIT : I think the “invite” only works for people already in this Forum and not for people on courses. So perhaps the “encouragement” is to get others interested in a topic.
So @alanh, when you can invite the third person, you should get a badge - a good test.
A slightly ‘clunky’ alternative you could consider for some of your courses would be to delete some of the existing content from the description area (having first made a note of it) and replace it with the ‘link’ to the new forum. You could then re-insert the removed text at a later date when Memrise has given us the promised expanded course description area. The advantage of this is that the ‘link’ would have better visibility than in a multimedia level.
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I have just tried to send an invite to a Memrise user who isn’t here yet (I think - the username is not listed in the Users section). The site let me do it and said that the invitation had been sent. I have no idea whether it worked, though.
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Thanks @widle Did their name come up as a suggestion? If it did, then I guess they may have already been there.
I just re-tried inviting @iamwillow to the test thread and it was accepted this time. At the moment, I can’t think of anyone who is not a forum member to ‘invite’ but I see @widle has ‘cracked’ that one for us. Thanks @widle 
@iamwillow, sorry if this has caused you any confusion or created a log-jam of emails! 
Nope, no suggestion.