For hosted sites, newly added General category. How can one change all topics in one category to General category?

Our site is hosted by Discourse.

The category General was automatically added (08/30/2022). No staff member created it.

We currently have the category Uncategorized.

How can we change/move all Uncategorized topics to General?


In searching found this but that requires selecting each topic (465) and I can not find the first icon noted.

1 Like

Hi!

I can’t help you with this but I’m curious.
Can you go to your admin panel → Logs → Staff Actions → filter “Action: create category” and see which user created the category (if it was automated, it should be “system”) and when?

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You can click the wrench and select them and there is an option to move then in bulk.

If you have hundreds it’s easier to do it from the console. I suspect that someone will notice and offer to do it for you or your can email support and ask them to do it.

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The list results in sequential values for category ids from 5 - 31.
The general category was assigned category id 32 and is not in the list.

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I haven’t checked the code but I noticed #general showed up here yesterday. I think they finally listened to my suggestion of having a default category rather than the #uncategorized anti-category.

3 Likes

Thanks to those who responded. This is what I discovered/performed.

From the main page https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/ click the browser refresh button.

image

Click Categories
Click on Uncategorized

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Click image

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Scroll down so that all topics show in list. Topics not visible can not be selected so they all need to be visible. Hopefully you don’t have thousands.
End of page should show image
At top of page click image
Click image

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Notice the number of topics selected, make sure the number is correct.
Click image
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Change category
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Click image

The progress will be shown.
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This now shows the topics listed with the category General

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but the General category is not showing the correct number of topics in the category drop down, e.g.

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and the category Uncategorized still shows a number, e.g.

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and still list those topics, e.g.


Seems patience is a virtual here.

After a few minutes the values are changing, e.g.

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In checking the next day all topics have been moved.

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Note: There is also a related Discourse setting allow_uncategorized_topics

Allow topics to be created without a category. WARNING: If there are any uncategorized topics, you must recategorize them before turning this off.

When this is enabled new topics created without a category will be assigned the category Uncategorized

4 Likes

Great minds think alike! We made this change with the aim of simplifying the interface by providing a default category rather than uncategorized. I like the name you have for this “anti-category”! :wink: We also will be seeding a default chat channel which will be in the general category.

We also are no longer seeding the lounge category by default. Sites that want a lounge for regulars can create one themselves.

Here’s the relevant PR: FEATURE: Replace the Lounge with the General category by oblakeerickson · Pull Request #18097 · discourse/discourse · GitHub

The first of a few PRs that will…

provide new users (and new admins!) with defaults that provide a simplified, human-readable, straightforward experience. They are able to understand how the site is structured, where users go to join forum discussions, and have an example to follow when customizing the structure by adding more categories and tags. Any of these default categories can be deleted by the admin should they so desire. We also have a category to put the general chat channel that is accessible to all users on the site by default.

This PR:

  • Seeds the General category so that the general chat channel will have
    a home
  • Does not seed the Lounge category anymore
  • Moves the “Welcome to Site” topic to the General category

This change was intended to only affect new sites and not existing sites, and a subsequent PR fixed it.

2 Likes

If you do, you’ll want this to be done at the console.

Something like

  Topic.where("category.id=null").update_all(category=123)
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