I agree it’s confusing not to know what these settings do and how they relate to each other. How can we improve the site setting descriptions? Here is how they look currently:
automatically_unpin_topics: "Automatically unpin topics when the user reaches the bottom."
default_topics_automatic_unpin: "Automatically unpin topics when the user reaches the bottom by default."
How about something like this? Accurate but a little clunky.
automatically_unpin_topics: "Automatically unpin topics when the user reaches the bottom. Can be changed in user preferences when enabled."
default_topics_automatic_unpin: "Automatically unpin topics when the user reaches the bottom by default. Can be changed in user preferences when automatically_unpin_topics is enabled."
It also occurs to me that these settings could be merged into one setting with multiple options that achieves the same goal, e.g. something like:
Automatically unpin topics and allow users to choose
Automatically unpin topics and do not allow users to choose
Do not automatically unpin topics and allow users to choose
Do not automatically unpin topics and do not allow users to choose
Those four options as a dropdown would work, but it’s kind of a lot of words to parse. I think I’d best understand it presented as two options, explained very simply – and always shown together, if that’s possible:
Unpin read topics.
Unpin read topics setting can be overriden by users.
I like that the settings to configure the defaults work exactly like the settings in your preferences. This makes it very easy to transfer the settings from your own preferences as the default for users.
I am interested in who disables it for all users without letting them choose. I know there are some topics here where people want to prevent users from unpinning topics in general, and I can understand that. But why do you want them to not be able to enable automatic unpinning for themselves if that’s what the user wants? I mean, if I want unpinning and I am not allowed to change the preference, I can still manually unpin all those topics.
Discourse reminds me that this topic has already been solved. Would it be possible to move this to UX?
Yes, I can understand that point of view. Looking at it from that point of view, maybe the answer is simply to leave default_topics_automatic_unpin alone and change automatically_unpin_topics so it explicitly is about hiding/showing that user preference.
I wouldn’t be surprised if few have even used these settings, or understood their effects. With the current descriptions they’d take some trial & error to figure out.