A new feature allows administrators to configure categories so that users are directed to the first post (instead of the last) after reading a topic, which is especially useful for documentation-style categories like Documentation. This setting is currently per-category and is already enabled on Meta for Documentation and its subcategories. wolftune suggested extending this behavior to tags or individual topics—especially for pinned posts—arguing that category-only control may lead to unnatural topic organization. sam expressed cautious support for wiki OPs but noted implementation complexity. codinghorror believes the category-level setting is sufficient for now, warning against unnecessary complexity. The feature aims to improve usability for reference-style content without overcomplicating the UI.
Per this commit categories have a new setting that allows administrators to amend the behavior of fully read topics.
Out-of-the-box logged-on-users will navigate to the last post in a topic after they are done reading it. This is not ideal for documentation type categories such as Documentation and so on where you often want to re-read the OP a few times.
This is a per category setting, to enable this special behavior tick Navigate to first post after topics are read in category settings on the designated category.
We have this enabled here on meta in the Documentation category and all the subcategories below it.
Any chance of adding this as an option per tag or even per topic? What about a setting for this behavior specifically for only pinned topics?
Having this just per-category encourages the set up of one or two categories with this and moving every topic that makes sense to those categories. However, it’s common to have a how-to style pinned post in a category full of other discussions.