The discussion revolves around the impact of ‘related posts’ on user engagement in a Discourse community. Damian_Boon expresses concern that related posts often distract users from the main topic, diverting their attention and interrupting their participation. Jagster shares that they keep related posts visible, viewing them as helpful reading suggestions, and emphasizes the importance of well-worded titles and effective tagging to guide users. They also note that while related posts can sometimes feel like AI-driven suggestions, they are generally accurate when relevant content exists. Canapin finds the feature non-disruptive, occasionally exploring related posts after finishing a discussion. Damian_Boon concludes that the issue might stem from the theme being used, suggesting a potential solution.
Been reading quite a bit lately on this awesome community and Discourse try and engage discussion as the priority (obviously the whole point).
However there is one thing that has caught me out loads of times and diverted away from discussing.
The related posts.
After reading a decent discussion the related posts seem to be instantly after. A few times now a topic has caught my eye and ive clicked it thus leading me away from what i was doing which was going to reply.
How do you guys manage your related posts,do you turn them off?
I have them visible. Mostly because those are… just reading suggestions. I changed the title more general, though.
Some are using those kind of for doomscrolling, or browsing. It is matter of how titles of topics are worded to reflect that topic, and I and moderators, we are fixing those quite often (we have time, because we don’t have problem users or spam). Plus my active users know how tags are working and use those when searching something.
Most of users don’t search. That is a fact. They start a topic and then we do merging and/or lead to wanted direction. Or answer for question.
My weak point is suggested topics are extra content, that is not too often used. But again — on my forum those are decently accurate if there is related or similar content. So, my issue (well, that is not a real issue at all, but anyway) is it works similar way than an AI: it gives full amount of hits, even there isn’t any relevant ones; it has in-build force to offer something, because nil in not an accepted option
It doesn’t move my attention to the current topic away, so I don’t really care. When I’ve finished reading or posting, I sometimes have a look at them, and I sometimes click on them. To me, there’s zero problem with this feature. It doesn’t disrupt my experience in any way.
