I suggest that this setting should have the word “force” added to it somehow. For example, “force embeds to be unlisted” would work.
This would clarify that this setting will override any attempt to set an embed’s listed/unlisted status.
There are a number of support requests in Meta (do a search for “unlisted” to find some of them) that I suspect would have been avoided if this wording were improved.
Since the discussion in that topic (and the associated support requests) there was a change in discourse/discourse, which is perhaps why there haven’t been additional support requests since those you’re referring to.
Adds import_embed_unlisted (default true) specifically for topics created for imported embeds (primarily JS embeds).
Change embed_unlisted default to false.
The rationale behind this change, and the ultimate source of confusion in this feature set, was that the old site setting conflated a setting for a general feature set, namely the list status of embedded topics, with a specific use case for that feature set, namely the list status of topics embedded via an import (primarily JS embeds). You can see this conflation in the old wording.
embed_unlisted: "Imported topics will be unlisted until a user replies."
Note the use of the term “Imported”. This is now properly disambiguated into two settings:
embed_unlisted: "Embedded topics will be unlisted until a user replies."
import_embed_unlisted: "Imported embedded topics will be unlisted until a user replies. Overrides embed_unlisted."
The upshot of this change was
Users of JS embeds with site settings defaults should not have noticed a difference, as the import_embed_unlisted (default true) applies.
Users of WP Discourse with site settings defaults also should not have noticed a difference, as they now have their topics listed by default.
If either set of users have changed from the defaults, that change will apply over the defaults (as expected). The current state is as follows:
The discourse/discourse topic embedding system is “neutral” vis-a-vis its various clients with respect to topic listing and the average user does not have to change any settings.
WP Discourse will be removing the listing workarounds from the plugin and rely on the discourse/discourse feature set for topic listing defaults.
JS embedding will continue to enjoy the unlisted default (via import_embed_unlisted) to account for the need to auto-create topics in that “import” scenario.
In other words, the defaults now match the default expectations for each use case, and the settings only need be changed for special cases, in which case the user will need to educate themselves about the settings in any event.
In short, we could make the change you’re suggesting, however it would need to make sense in the above context. It’s not yet clear to me (just speaking for myself) that it’s necessary given the above.
I guess I missed the further changes. I just kept meaning to make that suggestion, and finally got around to it. The current status makes sense to me without my suggested change.