# Official groups/posts
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** moderation, groups
**Created:** [October 20, 2025, 10:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255 "2025-10-20T22:03:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ice.d](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ice.d)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2025, 10:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/1 "2025-10-20T22:03:36Z")
Hello I was thinking of a interesting idea.
When you have a big forum with a lot of groups and topics I was thinking Admins can mark a topic official and it would have a green icon on it that symbolizes it is an official topic or a text box in green saying official posts.
Official posts will always be displayed first Above global pins,
And official groups can be set up on Admin only creations and marked with the official group symbol or as a green group name.
The purpose of this is so the important of topics and groups are shown at the top as their the most important sure we can pin topics but if you have 5 pins what if one is the most important?
And no marking it with a tag as official on the topic may not mean anything as anyone can use it not js admins.
---
### Author:  [@Andrew\_Rowe](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Andrew_Rowe)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 12:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/2 "2025-10-21T00:50:20Z")
> [@ice.d](#):
>
> but if you have 5 pins what if one is the most important?
do ordinary users have the ability to pin topics?
5 pinned topics seems like a lot, with that many it seems like the whole point is lost. Is it common to have this many topics pinned? I’ve hung out in several discourse based forums and usually I’ve never seen more then one. Not throwing stones, just curious
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### Author:  [@ice.d](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ice.d)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 11:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/3 "2025-10-21T11:01:03Z")
Hey no only trust level 4 and mod/admins can.
I guess yeh it is but you may have rules announcements etc pinned
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 1:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/4 "2025-10-21T13:59:52Z")
It is possible for moderators to make their reply official using the post menu. Here is an example.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 2:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/5 "2025-10-21T14:01:06Z")
And there is the official staff color. Example.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 2:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/6 "2025-10-21T14:44:41Z")
> [@ice.d](#):
>
> if you have 5 pins what if one is the most important?
I’ve noticed this issue as well. There is no straightforward way to prioritize pinned topics. You effectively have to unpin and pin again to get them to show up in the order you want.
It does seem like it would help if we had something between pinned and bannered for cases when a banner is not appropriate/overkill but we want to have one topic always show up first and highlighted.
Here on meta I’ve noticed that the “about this category” topic gets buried over time, rendering it pretty much meaningless except for very new users. This is somewhat mitigated if you enable the [Category Banners](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-banners/86241) theme component, but that only displays a snippet of the first paragraph of the about topic.
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 2:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/7 "2025-10-21T14:55:31Z")
> [@tobiaseigen](#):
>
> Here on meta I’ve noticed that the “about this category” topic gets buried over time,
That depends on your preference (and the default for the site). I have them at the top while looking at the category, because I disable automatic unpin on all Discourse forums I join. If I decide I don’t need a topic at the top, I manually unpin it. But I don’t like them disappearing after I clicked them once.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 3:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/8 "2025-10-21T15:23:06Z")
I had a look at the settings and see that there are two of them, and they are enabled by default. I just disabled them here on meta so we can see how that feels for new members going forward.
I’m not entirely clear what the relationship between these two settings is. Do you know? I know “Default topics automatic unpin” affects the user preference (I opted not to change it historically for existing members).
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 3:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/9 "2025-10-21T15:27:34Z")
The first one hides the option from the user preferences, so no one can change this in their preferences on Meta.
The second one is the default for the preference.
At least that’s what I wrote here:
> [@Question about pinned topics settings](https://meta.discourse.org/t/question-about-pinned-topics-settings/327791/2):
>
> The user peference is only visible if automatically unpin topics is enabled.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 3:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/10 "2025-10-21T15:53:00Z")
Nice! OK, I have enabled Automatically unpin topics here on meta again, and can confirm that the user pref is showing up again. The user pref was enabled for me by default and I have disabled it for myself now. New users will now have it set to disabled by default, and existing users can change it for themselves.
It’s confusing not to know what these settings do - I will reply over there to discuss improving the setting descriptions.
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### Author:  [@ToddZ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ToddZ)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 7:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/11 "2025-10-21T19:19:26Z")
> [@tobiaseigen](#):
>
> This is somewhat mitigated if you enable the [Category Banners](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-banners/86241) theme component, but that only displays a snippet of the first paragraph of the about topic.
Category Banners does append a “read more” link to the full About topic, though, which is nice. (EDIT: oops, I’m thinking of the [Category Headers component](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-category-headers-theme-component/148682))
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 7:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/12 "2025-10-21T19:49:23Z")
Really? How do you enable that? I don’t see that in the theme component settings.
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### Author:  [@ToddZ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ToddZ)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/13 "2025-10-21T20:07:46Z")
I’m sorry – I’m using the [Category Headers component](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-category-headers-theme-component/148682), not Category Banners! 😳
It displays the first paragraph of the About topic and optionally adds a “read more” link:
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 8:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/14 "2025-10-21T20:27:50Z")
I like that! Would be a handy feature request for [Category Banners](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-banners/86241) which we use here.
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### Author:  [@ice.d](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ice.d)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 9:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/15 "2025-10-21T21:48:51Z")
yeh i know about these I’ve used them but their not effective in priotizing
And I added category banners but I’m not sure how to work them
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2025, 11:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/16 "2025-10-21T23:10:44Z")
Yes, sorry we hijacked your topic! 😅
As I wrote above, I think your feature idea has merit:
> [@tobiaseigen](#):
>
> It does seem like it would help if we had something between pinned and bannered for cases when a banner is not appropriate/overkill but we want to have one topic always show up first and highlighted.
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### Author:  [@putty](https://meta.discourse.org/u/putty)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2025, 12:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/17 "2025-10-23T00:32:59Z")
What if you have a single pinned “START HERE” topic, but within it you point people to other topics?
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### Author:  [@ice.d](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ice.d)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2025, 10:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-groups-posts/386255/18 "2025-10-23T10:56:56Z")
I guess that can work but what people may not look at it more then once like if I added more links to the start here they wont know/