I answer for all those I know for sure.
Yes you can. Then that category follows your Mastodon account.
Replies yes. Favorites (stars) no, because role of it is just showing those ”likes” locally to that mastodon users. Others, like your category or who ever is following that user, aka. your organization, never sees given favorites.
This is my issue at the moment, but no in the meaning comments written under a topic in a category doesn’t travel to Mastodon.
But if you allow, then that category can be followed from Mastodon and then everything written is public in Mastodon — depending of your settings, topics and posts, or just first post of topics. Reactions don’t move to Mastodon.
Basically:
- if a category follows a mastodon user: Discourse gets from Mastodon
- if a mastodon user follows a category: Mastodon gets from Discourse
So emphasis is, simplified point of view for sure,
- if the main point is tell to forum users, and Mastodon users see only if they follow, then publishing happens in topics and Mastodon users see only if someone follows that category (or they know how to find that category as an ActivityPub user)
- if the main point is tell to Mastodon users, and forum users see if they follow that category, and federated participation isn’t needed from category, then that category follows your mastodon user
Almost same thing, but messages are shown differently in Mastodon.
One thing. Because of limits of Mastodon practically every markdown tags is shown as is, meaning for example bolding doesn’t happen on Mastodon, and followers see **bold** instead of bold. And tags doesn’t move here or there.