Hi Lindsey,
Thank you for the response and for checking with the engineering team. I’d be happy to share more about our use case.
We are building a community for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. For each major crypto asset, we want to create a dedicated, persistent channel for real-time discussion.
We found the standard topic/post model isn’t ideal for this because:
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Pace & Format: The conversations are rapid and consist of short messages, updates, and reactions, which is a natural fit for the chat format.
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Information Flow: Our users need to see the newest messages first and scroll up for recent history, which is the default behavior in chat. In contrast, topics are designed to be read chronologically from oldest to newest.
The chat plugin’s threaded replies and reverse-chronological display are a perfect match for the user experience we want to create.
Our main challenge is scale. Because we’ll have a channel for each asset, we anticipate needing hundreds of channels, each potentially holding a very long history. This is why we’re so interested in the performance limits.
We are committed to using Discourse because of its powerful moderation, user management, and gamification features, which are critical for building a healthy community.
Looking forward to hearing what the engineers think. Thanks again!