The discussion revolves around hiding categories from guests on a Discourse forum. orangeandblack5 wants to mute categories by default for unregistered guests, but allow registered users to see them normally and have the option to mute them if desired.
orangeandblack5 explains that this is due to an increase in visibility of forum games on the latest post feed since transitioning to Discourse, causing issues with roughly half of all traffic coming from unregistered guest accounts.
bts suggests looking into category permissions, which orangeandblack5 notes won’t work since it needs to affect non-registered guests specifically. pfaffman proposes changing permissions to require trust level 0, but orangeandblack5 points out this would block unregistered users from seeing categories even if they search for them.
Stephen and schleifer confirm that it’s not possible to achieve the desired configuration with the current Discourse settings. schleifer mentions a related discussion on Meta Discourse and the possibility of a future change. orangeandblack5 asks if this change is coming soon and if it’s possible to make categories default muted for guests but not for registered users (trust level 0 and above).
Hello,
I was wondering if there was any way to make categories muted by default for guests, but allow users with accounts to see them normally (and also mute them if they so choose).
A bit of searching did not find this question asked before, although I will admit it’s entirely possible I used the wrong keywords.
Thanks!
For a bit more explanation of the reasoning behind this question - a forum I am a part of has recently been dealing with a transition to Discourse, and in doing to the visibility of forum games has shot way up due to the latest post being the ones shown by default in pretty much every conventional way of viewing the forum.
While these games have been around for a long time, and administration does not wish to outright remove them, the old software simply didn’t show these categories in its latest feed by default. Thus, we wish to accomplish something similar here.
In investigating the statistics of the site, it was found that roughly half of all traffic comes from unregistered guest accounts. Therefore, simply muting these categories by default for new users has not resulted in any significant improvement of the situation.
Thus, we are hoping that it is possible to mute these categories for unregistered users somehow, and then we can simply pin a post telling new users with accounts how they may mute these categories on their account if they wish.
Have you looked at category permissions? If you go to a category page, click “edit” and then the “security” tab you can set permissions for what user groups can see, reply, and/or create topics in that category.
In this case, sounds like removing the default permissions setting (everyone) and adding a rule so trust_level_0 users can create / reply / see the category might do the trick. You could also e.g. make it so tl0 (all users) can see, but only tl1 users can create / reply, or something like that.
The idea is for non-registered guests to be affected, but registered users to not be.
You can change the permissions to require trust level 0.
Ah, I see - that’s a great idea, if it works as intended!
Hmmmmm
Is there any way to allow unregistered users to see a category if they search it out, but have topics be muted for them?
Because unless I misunderstand, the above would completely block unregistered users from seeing these posts even if they specifically look for them. No?
No, there isn’t.
It can’t appear in search but be hidden in the normal category view.
They don’t need to be hidden in Category view, just New/Latest.
As if they were muted.
You can suppress a category from latest topics for all users, or you can default mute it for logged in users. The exact configuration you want is not possible because mute does not affect anons 
That may change eventually:
@sam any chance this is coming soon?
And, I guess, more specifically - could it be made so that something could be default muted for guests but not for registered users (TL0 and above)?