Discourse does have a lot of options but it’s not that hard to go through them methodically.
One improvement might be to have not only a description of each site setting but also a link to documentation. Sometimes the description is inadequate except as a reminder when you already know. Having said that, it’s easy enough to search for the information, or ask here.
The “30-minute installation” page links to selected forum topics. That’s probably the best place to add further links to documentation.
Everybody will have a different focus and it’ll be hard to cater for everyone. I came from Mailman so found the way Discourse approaches emails a bit haphazard, but I realised it’s good enough and haven’t had any real problems.
If you want a community-editable cat database (I’m not sure that’s exactly what you do want) then try out MediaWiki plus Cargo (or SMW) and Page Forms.
Agreed. It would be a big project, but it’d be nice for each site setting (or at least ones where a brief description doesn’t quite cut it) to link to a doc page section that explains what it does and how it interacts with any other relevant settings.
I think something like that is already part of the redesign process. The learn more link on the config page for the about page, for example, links to the documentation topic here on meta.
I think a link per group of site settings about the same area may work better than for every single setting. For a single setting, search will hopefully show you the related documentation topic anyway.
If that were the plan then some way to navigate from a site setting to its group would be good, as sometimes you come across a site setting using search and the description lacks context.
