At the risk of being a bit partisan, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to classify Discourse as a web page?
It is a web app and as such blurs the line between web pages and apps.
If I approach it as an app that surely changes things significantly?
Open it as a PWA and it appears fairly convincingly to behave like an app.
If I open iOS Mail where is the footer?
(Ok, ok there are some basic controls on a bottom floating panel but that’s also true for Discourse in hub mode)
Is Apple being harangued for not having one?
What about Gmail?
How is ok for Gmail and Mail to have infinite scroll for emails, but it’s somehow not ok where Topic Lists are concerned? Aren’t they semantically very similar?
Would users be delighted if Gmail or iOS Mail devs were to introduce a button for more emails?
How come their accessibility experts have concluded that infinite scroll is ok for those two apps?
So are these guidelines even applicable in this case?