The discussion revolves around the setting “allow uncategorized topics = false” and its effect on users. erlend_sh proposes that instead of removing the “uncategorized” option, a warning should be thrown if a user tries to post without selecting a category. This comes from the issue of users posting to the wrong category or no category at all when the setting is on or off.
erlend_sh shares their experience with this setting on their forum, highlighting the problems with both options.
mcwumbly agrees with the proposal and suggests a tweak to the mockup.
codinghorror mentions that this feature existed before but regressed. erlend_sh and erlend_sh discuss the regression, hoping it was accidental.
cpradio shares that the feature partially exists, with different behavior for Moderators/Users and Admins. codinghorror suggests this might be due to a misunderstanding about how the feature appears to different user roles.
As long as the order of categories in the composer drop-down can not be changed, I’d like to propose the following:
The allow uncategorized topics = false setting shouldn’t take away the uncategorized option from the drop-down altogether. Instead, it should throw a warning if a user tries to post without having selected a category to post to.
This is based on having tried the setting on and off for an extended time on my forum, and my choices as of today are these (I’ve tried living with both for an extended time):
uncategorized = false - A large percentage of our users post blindly to whichever category is at the top of the list, which usually ends up being wrong as the most common type of post is Troubleshooting, yet our top-most category is User Code & Projects
uncategorized = true - A large percentage of our users post without any category attached. (The funny part is some of them even “correct” themselves by posting to User Code & Projects, which they’ve been conditioned to think is the right category for their kind of query, because we haven’t been vigilant enough about moving their topics.)
