I think it is important to not inject one’s cultural norms, beliefs and personal opinions into other peoples web site designs, communities and business models; and so these types of phrases should (and could) be easily user (admin) configurable.
If a web site owner / designer does not like, for whatever reason (to each his own, right?):
There are no latest topics. That’s sad.
and they want to change it to:
There are no latest topics. Please visit this link on how to post a topic.
That should really be up to the web site owner(s), easily configurable in the settings. The default could be whatever as long as the admins can change these phrases.
Sidebar: As someone who has travelled to over 50 countries, worked (some short term gigs) in at least 15, and is currently an expat living outside my birth country (US) for around 14 years (now in Thailand), experience reinforces common sense that every culture has it’s own “norms” and what is funny in one culture can easily be offensive in another. (sorry, for stating the obvious…end Sidebar)
That’s my 2 cents: Make these phrases admin configurable.
It is good for Discourse to make these phrases admin configurable and this creates the broadest possible user base for Discourse.