I have two levels of categories in my forum. I would like to allow users to change their notification settings on the top-level category with an option to apply this setting to the sub-categories within the parent. This prevents them from needing to react to category changes by once again updating their sub-category settings.
I’m thinking something like a checkbox to enable the notification selection to apply to all sub-categories.
a main section may have dozens of sub-sections, it’s annoying to mute them all manually.
I think a modal would be better. That way when you change your tracking status, we say something like:
Would you like to apply this change to *all* underlying sub-categories?
You're currently Watching 2 sub-categories, and Tracking 1 sub-category.
This is what makes it a not-so trivial change though. A convenience feature like this one needs to communicate very clearly what it does, so that users don’t shoot themselves in the foot. No one wants to make a mistake in bulk 
If a clear UX path is laid out, we’d probably be open to a PR on this one.
Has anything happened in this area? My categories are still a bit in flux, and they might continue to shift. I would like someone to be able to set a notification for a main category, and have it apply to all sub-categories, even if new sub-categories get created later.
To me, conceptually, a topic that is in the “Main - Sub” category is also in the “Main” category. I expected that watching “Main” would notify me if someone created a topic in “Main - Sub”.
Lo mismo aquí. Hemos estado creando lentamente muchas subcategorías en los últimos meses, pero acabamos de darnos cuenta de que necesitamos notificar a todos para que configuren manualmente sus suscripciones a estas subcategorías.
Para mí, la solución más obvia es replicar la configuración de suscripción de todos los usuarios en una categoría de nivel superior a cada nueva subcategoría creada. Esto podría resultar en un exceso de suscripciones, pero es fácil que cualquier usuario lo corrija mediante los enlaces en los correos electrónicos.
De lo contrario, Discourse es simplemente fantástico.