# Indicator next to topic title to denote specific Group participation
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [6 בדצמבר, 2016, 12:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823 "2016-12-06T00:51:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@LilTrashPanda](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LilTrashPanda)
#### Post date: [6 בדצמבר, 2016, 12:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/1 "2016-12-06T00:51:48Z")
Hi everyone!
For the forums I’ve been setting up, the developers of the product are going to be active participants in topics; as such, I’d like to make an easy-to-notice callout next to the Topic title (in the topic table view, not necessarily in the thread itself) to show the company icon in order to help other users identify when anyone from within the developer group has contributed to a thread. Blizzard does this on their forums and I think it’s awesome!
> Example of Blizzard forums (1st post):
>
> 
I think I’m familiar enough with CSS to understand how to put the icon before the text, however I’m not sure how to set it up where the CSS “knows” that a user in the “developer” group has posted in a topic to trigger the icon to show. Has anyone else done something like this or have some leads on how I can do it?
> Mock-up of what I’d like to show (2nd post):
>
> 
Thanks so much for any help/tips!
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [6 בדצמבר, 2016, 1:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/2 "2016-12-06T01:17:09Z")
I don’t think there’s any way to do this at the moment. We’d need a dedicated field that is populated on each topic to do this in a way that doesn’t kill performance.
I agree with the request, though, because I think it’s useful to a community.
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### Author:  [@LilTrashPanda](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LilTrashPanda)
#### Post date: [6 בדצמבר, 2016, 1:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/3 "2016-12-06T01:22:47Z")
Awesome, thanks for the consideration! 😊
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [6 בדצמבר, 2016, 1:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/4 "2016-12-06T01:33:47Z")
The list doesn’t have any way to specifically target a Group.
But there may be a suitable work-around.
If a Category is specific to a Group, the Category could be targeted.
Rows have “first, last, frequent” poster information. So member names could be targeted.
A Group-specific Tag could be added to a topic and the Tag could be targeted.
I’m not sure about how well CSS could be used since there is no such thing as a “parent selector” but maybe someone better at CSS could figure out how to do it.
And I guess some JavaScript code would be able to do some magic, but I fear it would be quite a drain on resources running on every topic in a list.
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### Author:  [@sjdorst](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sjdorst)
#### Post date: [8 בדצמבר, 2016, 8:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/5 "2016-12-08T20:50:08Z")
In the Discourse hosted software help forum I most participate in, there is a manually assigned badge for employees of the software company. The employees set this as their “title” in preferences. It then appears next to their avatar in any posting. Note it does NOT appear in the one line topic summary when part of a category, new, unread, or latest list.
Might this suffice for you?
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### Author:  [@LilTrashPanda](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LilTrashPanda)
#### Post date: [9 בדצמבר, 2016, 11:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/6 "2016-12-09T23:46:58Z")
Hi Steven!
Thanks for the suggesiton; could you link me to a post where this is applied so I could check it out? In our instance, we mostly need this to show up next to the Topic name so from a very high-level scan, users can easily pick out when a thread has a developer response within (rather than needing to drill down into the post and then _maybe_ come across the developer post itself).
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### Author:  [@sjdorst](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sjdorst)
#### Post date: [10 בדצמבר, 2016, 12:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/7 "2016-12-10T00:08:39Z")
Here’s an example:
> **[New 3D Warehouse model viewer is broken!](https://forums.sketchup.com/t/new-3d-warehouse-model-viewer-is-broken/29753/18)**
>
> We have issues queued up, which we’re fixing. Nothing to report yet.
The badge doesn’t appear in the preview above so you’ll have to click through.
Based on your need for a “high level” indicator, I now doubt this will fill your need.
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [10 בדצמבר, 2016, 1:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/indicator-next-to-topic-title-to-denote-specific-group-participation/53823/8 "2016-12-10T01:33:56Z")
> [@sjdorst](#):
>
> I now doubt this will fill your need.
I’m fairly certain it won’t
Categories can belong to a Group
Members can belong to a Group
Topics belong to a Category
It might be fairly easy and not be much of a resource hit to associate a Group to a Topic based on the topic creator.
But what is wanted is to associate a Group to a Topic based on topic participants.
In effect this means that _every time any topic gets a reply_, code would need to find out what if any groups the poster belonged to, and then if applicable associate the group(s) to the Topic so that it could be styled in topic lists.