Here’s what I usually do on a new Discourse instance:
- Rename
Uncategorizedto something more friendly: Agora, Participation… - Change the category description (that’s done via the
Admin > Customize > Text Content, looking up the string category.uncategorized_description: I change it to “Short lived topics to get the conversation started.” - Uncheck suppress uncategorized badge so that Uncategorized topics now appear like other topics.
I agree that something should be done to encourage participation and remove the need to choose a category. Usually, one starts a topic in a category, so that’s already the case that the new topic is chosen with that category. When it’s not the case, I find Agora or Participation much more friendly and less anxiogenic than Uncategorized (which invites you to categorize it).