We have implemented Discourse for our company’s forums, and I just received the Previous/Next topic functionality as a feature request. I am curious to hear what’s become of this request for the official Discourse project.
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Generally use keyboard shortcuts (press the ? key on your keyboard) or use Suggested Topics at the bottom of every topic, which is a de-facto “next”.
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Both “solutions” will not work for people who got used to this functionality from other forum software.
Howerver, if the team does not see the necessity for this feature, I guess it should be pretty much plugin material we’re talking about here. “Previous” and “next” topics should be the same as in the category list. So starting from the current topic, we should fetch the two neighboring topics, insert the URLs into two buttons, add them in the footer section above the suggested topics, and would be ready to go. However, I wonder how big the request volume for this feature is: I’ve heard this complaint exactly once on my board; and we have 7k users…
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I also will chime in here for a previous/next unread navigation element.
Our community follows a sports team. Just about everything posted decays quickly. Over the weekend, a bunch of threads will be started or added to about the last game, the next game, the performance of league teams, latest recruiting news (it’s a college team). Our members like to check in and read up all the new threads, or new additions to threads, and know they’re caught up. It’s like browsing a sports section that is only about your team.
Right now that requires a lot of pogo-sticking to the top of the categories’ lists.
The suggested posts is a good idea when the community topics are not so ephemeral. Right now, when the team we follow is playing, say, Michigan, the suggested topics might be the last Michigan game, or another IGT (in-game thread) for another team (presumably because we use the same abbreviation in the topic title).
There’s very little call for contextualizing our posts/topics beyond recency.
I can see where many (most) communities would benefit from this kind of thing. I once managed a staff of information architects who worked on ways to provide contextual links on 50,000-page Web sites; it’s hard to do, but has a huge payoff when done well.
Ours is not one that benefits. Discourse is superb for us in so many other ways that not being able to quickly go to “next unread” it is a minor annoyance. But it would be a nice addition.
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Some of this may be solvable quite easily with a few switches
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Should you consider tagging here, so there is some way to glue team games together? Eg: tag Michigan games with #michigan
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Perhaps we could enable a mode were last N topics where there is tag and category overlap always show up in suggested.
We’re actually not interested in last year’s Michigan game - that was an example of the kind of algorithm-driven suggested link that makes no sense for us.
We’re just looking for a way to read through all new posts without having to return the the “latest” list to do it.
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But suggested already does that, can you explain how it is failing.
If there are unread posts in topics you are tracking we will show them in suggested first.
If there are new topics suggested shows them second
Otherwise … random
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That’s what I do, almost always.
If I have understood correctly, I think it is related to this:
For example, today I read through my unreads here on Meta. Then I read through new topics in a couple of categories I’m watching. Having read the last of these in Features, I’m presented with this:
However, visiting the “New” page shows there are still at least two new threads in UX, a category I’m watching, but these are not shown to me as suggested topics. Instead, I see Support and Dev, which I’m not watching.
As I said in the other thread, my expectation would be that “Suggested” prioritises categories I’m watching, but this is not the case for new topics.
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I may be misunderstanding, or in a weird situation that is not bringing out the best.
We migrated our forum from an existing SMF install. Many thousands of messages. Users are not that psyched, so new posts have been low.
It may be that without new posts, the suggested posts is over-represented with what it believes are the best possible but are actually of little-to-no relevance.
As all users are wont to do, I have begun ignoring the suggested posts when my first experience with it was not helpful. I’ll pay better attention.
We are also suffering from being used to the features we had that don’t have an immediately obvious parallel on Discourse. In most (maybe all) cases, there is a parallel that we just have too stumble upon.
SMF had its own problems (UI and everything else), But getting to the bottom of new posts on a thread and simply hitting “Next” was kind of nice. 
You may want to go into site settings and turn down the suggested time interval, which defaults to 1 year, to something like 3 months so it is only suggesting more recent topics (when it can’t fill from new and unread).
This is where I am struggling big time. If there are no new posts, nothing is going to really help you.
If there are new posts in tracked topics OR new topics… they will always be on top of suggested before anything else.
Maybe the issue is that you have a huge number of OLD topics that nobody is tracking?
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Thanks for all the feedback on this … Reduced the time frame on related to 30 days and at least the related are now somewhat relevant due to recency.
We’ll see how it plays out.
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@codinghorror Sono tornato su questo argomento ora che uso molto la barra laterale.
Ciò che tende a succedere è che sto guardando un “sottoinsieme” di argomenti, ma i suggerimenti tendono a dare priorità alla cosa sbagliata per me.
In particolare, sto lavorando su un sottoinsieme specifico (nuovi argomenti in “ux”), ma vari contenuti “non letti” casuali tendono a disturbare nella sezione suggeriti. Questo diventerà un problema ancora più grande con vari filtri avanzati come “tracking” e così via.
Stavo pensando che forse potremmo iniziare con una scorciatoia da tastiera solamente per “prossimo/precedente” argomento.
Come funziona?
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Quando visiti qualsiasi elenco di argomenti (nuovi/non letti in un tag e così via), lo teniamo traccia come filtro in memoria. (Questo dovrebbe funzionare anche per la ricerca a pagina intera)
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Quando digiti t n, verrai portato all’argomento successivo nell’“elenco più recente”.
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Quando digiti t p, verrai portato all’argomento precedente nell’“elenco più recente”.
In generale, mi sono opposto a questa funzionalità per anni e anni, ma ora posso vedere quanto possa essere incredibilmente utile per flussi di lavoro specifici.
Cosa ne pensi di renderla una funzionalità principale (solo scorciatoia da tastiera)?
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Penso vada bene come scorciatoia da tastiera.
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L’uso preesistente in GMail prevede l’impiego di j e k per questa funzione; chiaramente non possiamo utilizzarli poiché sono già assegnati. Tuttavia, è molto interessante che abbiano scelto di usare lo stesso scorciatoia impiegata nell’elenco.
Sto esaminando le scorciatoie esistenti per vedere se possiamo adottare una singola lettera intuitiva. Le frecce destra e sinistra sono intuitive, ma mancano su alcune tastiere e potrebbero essere troppo facili da premere per errore. Probabilmente inizierò con una scorciatoia a due lettere, a meno che non mi arrivi un’illuminazione improvvisa.
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Questo è completo per la navigazione di livello superiore, i tag e le categorie, come da:
Vedrò se riesco ad aggiungerlo ai messaggi privati, alla ricerca e ai segnalibri, ma le basi sono tutte qui.
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