Blog posts would be nicer if authored by an identifiable person

Site feedback
1

I’ve noticed over the last wee while that the linked topics to blog posts have @Discourse as the ‘owner’, regardless of who authored the blog.

This somewhat impairs the community experience here on meta.discourse.org:

  1. It feels less intimate

  2. the author isn’t notified for replies

These make me far less likely to engage on those topics, and I suspect I’m not alone.

Of note, some original blog articles (such as Behind the Scenes: Our 2025 Prague Meetup) are ‘authored’ by “The Discourse Team”. This is even more offputting!

One of the strengths of CDCK is that you are not a bunch of faceless workers, but real people that fanboys like me can get to know.

To quote that blog post:

This is a core part of the Discourse value system: that as a company and a culture, we believe in human connections. We’re dedicated to recreating those connections online

I’d encourage you to lean in to this more on the blog site and on meta!

13 Likes
4

Great idea! I wonder, is it possible with Embed Discourse comments on another website via Javascript?

5

I don’t think it’s easy, and you can tell who the author is if you click the link to the blog. Maybe if you want to know who wrote it, you just have to make one more click. :person_shrugging:

1 Like
6

Looks like the change from individual users to using the Discourse user happened about a year ago.

Blog topics created 1 year ago ordered by create date In this list, currently only the newest topic is authored by Discourse; all the others show a user. I wonder why that changed.

1 Like
7

Thanks for pointing this out! I hadn’t noticed before, but it appears that the authorship of blog posts and their related topics on meta are not always in sync. We’ll have to go back through and make sure the authors match up, for the reasons @nathank states. Then going forward remember to change the author to match. That is super helpful feedback.

When a post on the blog is authored by “Discourse Team” that is intentional and it makes sense that the Discourse user on meta is the author too. In those cases we are collectively writing as a team. That post represents all of us who were there!

If you scroll through the blog you can see that nearly all posts are authored by specific people.

3 Likes
9

Thanks for the report, there was a bug in our blog theme, just fixed it so authors will be correct now.

4 Likes
10

I updated the authors for all posts going back to last year. So much nicer! Thanks everyone for the feedback.

This is one excellent example of “See something, say something!” Please let us know when you see something that can be improved. Either direct to me as PM or here in Site feedback is great. :hugs:

4 Likes