If we reflect for a moment on the original post, we will realize that the crux of the matter was the initial information overload for a certain demographic of users.
In this case I think it would be best to show the avatar of the topic creator. The fact that it is more stable (less information) is a plus in this user case.
Now, maybe once the initial barrier is overcome, or for regular forum users, having more information is preferable. I don’t know how this dichotomy can be resolved.
I wonder if “progressive reduction” may not be employed here. For people that use Discourse a lot and use it daily, some labels could be toned down.
On the opposite hand, for first-timers, we could have a progressive increase in information.
Start clean, with very low amounts of information but a very clear interface (labelled buttons, etc.) and slowly start to increase the information shown while decreasing the UI-overload.
May be way too complex, and the advantages are not clear-cut. Yep, bad idea.
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I fixed that just now.
I agree on @zogstrip’s plate, pinned topics will not show avatar on mobile, but retain full width for title + excerpt.
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is now in 
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After a few days of retraining my brain. I actually like the change because I can decide whether to read a topic depending on who last posted in it. 
Though I still think there are no clear indicators for users to easily deduce if the avatar refers to the last poster or the topic creator. One solution I thought of is to utilize the reply icons which I personally do not think will add to the information overload.
or
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I think a far better approach here is:
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On mobile stop showing excerpts for pinned topics, they provide very limited value anyway
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On desktop stop showing excerpts as soon as you visit a pinned topic
The change makes the list look real odd for cases like this
And pins take up too much vertical space by default
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Agree with this, I’ve had excerpts in the mobile css removed for quite a while now. The no-excerpt version doesn’t gel quite as well with the current mobile latest page as it used to, but I still prefer it over the huge chunk of text.
I disagree, I think the point of the pin is to force the info in front of people, until they read it, so the current design is correct. To get it to unpin, just read the topic.
anon can not unpin it, so this is quite a permanent punishment for the majority of the visitors of the site, for extremely low value on mobile (you literally get nothing out of the excerpt, if “calling out is the goal” make it flashing marquee 
), it would still be on top, but instead of just fitting 4 pinned topics on the home screen you would fit 4 pinned topics + 4 normal topics… its a huge gain usability wise.
additionally the “pinned in category” also expand on the home page, which throws off the UI, cause they are not at the top.
True, anon are limited in what they can do… not sure if there’s anything to be done about that though.
I think it’d be kind of a major loss if anons did not see this on first arrival though:
I suppose we could suppress the date?
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Wouldn’t 2 or 3 lines be enough though even for this case? 6 lines is heaps and welcome to meta is repeated
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Sure it could be tightened up some. Also date field is kind of debatable value on a pinned topic, yes? we could remove that and get 1 more line back.