Discourse Topic Voting

[Discourse]

	Summary	Discourse Topic Voting lets community members vote on topics in designated categories.
	Install Guide	This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately.

As this is an official plugin maintained by the Discourse team, Support, Contribute > Bug, Contribute > UX, and Contribute > Feature requests can be made in the respective categories here on Meta, and tagged with the appropriate plugin tag. Click on a link below to get one started.

Support Bug UX Feature

While Discourse Topic Voting can be used for a variety of use cases, this documentation is focused on the primary use case of an ideas or feature request category.

Note: Discourse Topic Voting is available on the Business or Enterprise plans.

Setting up an ideas category

When creating a new category, select the ideas type to turn on Discourse Topic Voting for that category.

The Category name and Style fields will be present with sensible defaults, which you can overwrite if needed.

Note: When you are editing an existing category, the Category type field will let you add or remove category types. Category types can be combined so you can use features like voting and marketing answers as solutions (via Discourse Solved) together.

On the Ideas tab, you can adjust some of the default settings for this and any other ideas categories in your community.

• Show who voted: Allow users to see who voted for a topic.
• Show votes on profile: Allow users to see their own votes in their activity feed. This is most important when votes are limited.
• Limit member votes: When enabled, members can only cast a certain number of votes based on their trust level.

Voting for a topic

Members can vote for topics in ideas categories by interacting with the counter in the topic header.

Inside an ideas category, members can click the Votes top menu item to sort ideas by their vote count. The My Votes top menu item filters to only show topics they’ve voted for. In addition to the counter inside a topic, you can also see votes on the topic card.

Here are the views a user will see before and after voting in a topic:

When show votes on profile is enabled, there is also a section in the user’s profile page that displays their active votes:

Note: In ideas categories, Likes are automatically deactivated. To use both likes and votes at the same time, see: Show both like and vote button on topics

Limiting votes

When Limit member votes is enabled, members only have a certain number of available votes. When a vote is cast, that is called an “active vote”. Vote limits are meant to encourage thoughtful voting on the topics that matter most.

• The vote limit is determined by trust level; see the above section for more details.
• Each user can cast only one vote per topic.
• Votes are locked when a topic is closed or archived, but the votes are no longer considered active. The members who cast these votes will have their one vote from that topic restored to their pool of available votes.
  • If a topic is re-opened or unarchived, the votes are reclaimed and applied back to the users’ Active Vote count.
  • If a topic reclaims the votes of a user, causing them to exceed their Active Vote limit, they simply need to wait until topics are closed or archived to allow them to vote again.
• If an entire topic (Topic A) is merged into another Topic-Voting topic (Topic B), all the the following takes place:
  1. Unique votes from Topic A are added to Topic B.
  2. Duplicated votes (the same user voted in both topics) from Topic A will not be added to Topic B. Instead, the vote from Topic A will be restored to the user’s pool of available votes.
  3. Topic A’s vote count is set to zero and the topic is closed so that no further voting can take place in Topic A.

Settings

Name	Description
topic voting enabled	Allow users to vote on topics?
topic voting enable vote limits	Limit the number of votes per user based on trust level. When disabled, members can vote on as many topics as they want.
topic voting show who voted	Allow users to see who voted?
topic voting show votes on profile	Allow users to see their votes in their activity feed?
topic voting alert votes left	Alert user when this many votes are left
topic voting tl0 vote limit	How many active votes are TL0 users allowed?
topic voting tl1 vote limit	How many active votes are TL1 users allowed?
topic voting tl2 vote limit	How many active votes are TL2 users allowed?
topic voting tl3 vote limit	How many active votes are TL3 users allowed?
topic voting tl4 vote limit	How many active votes are TL4 users allowed?

Note: The topic voting alert votes left and various topic voting TLN vote limit settings only apply when topic voting enable vote limits is enabled.

Topic Voting badges

These badges are disabled by default. You can enable them in the Badges area in the admin settings.

Name	Description	Long Description	Type	Grouping
Daydreamer	Receive a vote on your topic	This badge is granted for receiving a vote on one of your topics. Nice idea.		Community
Brainstormer	Receive 5 votes on your topic	This badge is granted for receiving 5 votes on one of your topics. Your topic is getting traction.		Community
Innovator	Receive 15 votes on your topic	This badge is granted for receiving 15 votes on one of your topics. So good it can’t be ignored.		Community
Visionary	Receive 25 votes on your topic	This badge is granted for receiving 25 votes on one of your topics. Give the people what they want!		Community

Data Explorer queries

List people who voted for a topic along with their email addresses:

--[params]
-- int :topic_id

SELECT
tvv.user_id,
email
FROM topic_voting_votes tvv
JOIN user_emails ue ON ue.user_id = tvv.user_id
WHERE topic_id = :topic_id
AND ue.primary = true

More explorer queries can be found in Community Building > Data & reporting - Topics tagged topic-voting

Last edited by @lindsey 2026-06-17T18:17:18Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[JammyDodger]

As part of the renaming for the Discourse Post Voting plugin we have also now renamed this one to complement it.

So I hereby officially welcome you all to the Discourse Topic Voting plugin.

[haydenjames]

Really like this plugin. Using it for a category reserved for blog articles. When entering a category with this plugin set to enabled, would it be possible to sort the topic list by # of votes descending?

thanks again!

[jidanni (Dan Jacobson)]

I notice in the animation on

Topic Voting

the user only finds out that

• he in fact has a limited number of votes
• and he now only has xx votes left

after he clicks to vote.

Perhaps he should learn all this in the mouseover for the vote button, before he clicks.

[nat (Natalie T)]

@JammyDodger

I hereby officially welcome you all to the Discourse Topic Voting plugin

To make it more official, the database tables of this plugin are now migrated to topic_voting_ to match the ones in post_voting_ as well, along with site settings .

When site owners update this plugin, existing data explorer queries that use the old tables will automatically update to use the new table names.

[Shauny (Shaun Robinson)]

How can I re-enable Discourse Reactions on the first post of a Voting Topic?

[Moin]

Did you try the tip to re-enable likes?

@Discourse

EXTRAS

In the categories where the Voting plugin is activated, Likes are automatically deactivated. Some sites may want to use both functions at the same time to like replies, see how to re-enable Likes.

[Shauny (Shaun Robinson)]

Ah sorry I did do this but thought it wasn’t working until I realised I was looking at my own posts so I shouldn’t expect to see a like button

[jrgong]

Is there any way to add the Voting Button directly into the topic list?

[NateDhaliwal]

I think this is what you’re looking for:

Alternative Voting Category Style

This theme component offers alternative styling for any specified categories that make use of the Discourse Voting plugin. Installation Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-alternative-voting-category-style If you are unfamiliar with theme components and how to install them, check out the theme installation guide. And if you’d like to learn more about Discourse themes, take a look at this guide. Preview [preview] The overall idea is based off of this mockup created by @…

[unknown_error]

Is there a way to automatically have the topic’s creator cast the first vote for their post? We have a bunch of users that create these topics but forget to vote on it, and it’s a small hassle having to remind them every time. Just wondering

Thanks for the plugin!

[Frederik]

@jidanni

the user only finds out that

• he in fact has a limited number of votes
• and he now only has xx votes left

after he clicks to vote.

Perhaps he should learn all this in the mouseover for the vote button, before he clicks.

I second this. Without users knowing that votes are limited they can’t adjust their behavior, so the original objective of encouraging users to vote thoughtfully is not effectively achieved.

[tyler.lamparter]

Is it possible to disable topic voting per topic in a category? We want most topics in the category to be votable, but sometimes we want to post non-v otable topics. I see there is a property on topics for can_vote, but I can’t seem to find anywhere in the UI or any API call to update this. It seems possible since the “About the XYZ category” topic that is initially made is not votable.

[NateDhaliwal]

@tyler.lamparter Perhaps this setting in the category settings?

@Discourse

To enable it, edit any category, look on the settings tab for the “Allow users to vote on topics in this category” checkbox:

[tyler.lamparter]

@NateDhaliwal we have that enabled, but I’m wondering if some topics put in that category can have it disabled. So 99% of topics put in our category should have topic voting, but a select few shouldn’t.

[NateDhaliwal]

Right. I don’t think that’s possible. You may be able to hide it with CSS, but that would be difficult since these changes would be site-wide, not per topic…

[tyler.lamparter]

The reason it seems like it’s possible is there is a can_vote flag on each topic and it is already driving what the UI shows. I just don’t see any way to update this flag via api or set it via UI.

The “About this category topic” that gets made whenever a new category is created:

A topic that one of our users posted in the category:

[JammyDodger]

For the #feature category here the voting options and info are hidden with a little CSS based on tag for feedback topics.