When I disallow uncategorised topics by disabling the flag in the backend
It still shows the “uncategorized” category when I edit a topic:
and allows me to post that topic.
Is that supposed to be that way?
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Are you on latest? Did you hard refresh after changing that setting?
Also, can’t admins post to uncategorized regardless of that setting?
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(note: i am running 0.9.9.11)
Actually it seems to be allowed as admin(which explains my screenshots) (note: it would be nice if there was a text showing that this category is available because I am admin). However: I was investigating this on behalf of a user of mine. He created a topic and it showed the first category as selected (so: he doesn’t select a category explicitly) and when he submits that post it will show a error message that he is not allowed to see that category. When I check that post it is marked as “uncategorised”.
Usability-wise I would love to see that it shows “not selected” in the dropdown (for both admins and regular users) when uncategorised is not allowed.
That’s exactly what happens for regular users.
I just deployed a fresh Discourse instance, and here’s what I found out in my testing with allow uncategorized topics option disabled:
- When I try to create topic as Admin, category defaults to uncategorized.
- When I try to create topic as normal user, category defaults to Select a category, which is just a placeholder and has a validation to select at least one category.
I am not able to repro this.
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It looks like that Uncategorized is the default category for the new posts by Admin or Moderator rank user, even if I have it disabled. Running docked Discourse 1.0.2 at Digital Ocean.
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Correct, admins and staff can always choose any category they like for a topic, including uncategorized. One of their powers.
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Is there any way to change this? It seems a bit odd to have the category default to Uncategorized even if you’ve disabled it.
Yeah, I get hit by this all of the time. I’ll navigate to a category, create a new topic, hit Create Topic and then go “Oh crap, I didn’t mean for that to be in Uncategorized, I wanted it in the private category I was just in!”
Happens way too often for me (you’d think I would have learned my lesson after the first 3 times…)
Odd, I just navigated to the “movies” category on try, clicked “New Topic”, and I get …
so the default category is indeed determined by the category you’re currently on when you select “New Topic”. (This also works for private categories in my testing)
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Ah, you know what it is. I use Reply as New Topic, and that doesn’t (nor should it). I just need to get in the habit of selecting a category.
It would be nice though to have “Select a category…” choosen by default instead of Uncategorized, so I have to actually select a category (instead of not selecting one and Uncategorized getting used automatically).
Maybe reply as new topic should default to the current category, though. This is still a bit of an edge case.
Or to “Select a category…” instead of “Uncategorized”. I’m not sure why anyone would want Uncategorized to be the default, but that’s just me 
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Except on increasingly rare occasions when I’m tired or distracted I’m used to selecting the category when I “Reply as”.
Since we use it almost exclusively to create private discussions I see no great concern having an Uncategorized category as long as it’s private.
But as @TechnoBear had an incident where the member saw her post, I’m guessing Uncategorized is not so much “private” as it is “unlisted” (i.e. the member followed the gutter link to it)
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