The discussion revolves around the topic participants order on the Discourse forum homepage. JoukoSaari questioned why the most recent poster’s avatar is not displayed on the right, as stated in the official beginner’s guide. However, JammyDodger pointed out that the most recent poster’s avatar is indeed displayed on the right, unless it’s the same as the original poster, in which case the original poster’s avatar gets a halo.
JoukoSaari agreed with this explanation but suggested that it would be better to have a consistent visualization method, either using the halo or the rightmost position. awesomerobot agreed that consistency would be nice but noted that using the rightmost position would result in duplicate avatars for the first and last poster if they are the same person.
Lilly shared a different opinion, suggesting that multiple avatars are cluttery and proposed the idea of having topic list view options, including admin settings to control avatar views and column placement, potentially as a theme component.
We use our forum for technical support mainly so it’s important for us to quickly check what user posted last in a given topic. I found an official beginner’s guide that states the following:
On the homepage you will see a selection of avatars (profile pictures) of:
the user who started the topic (always the first photo);
a selection of the most active participants;
and, who created the most recent post (usually the last photo).
in some cases, the first photo has a blue border or blue halo to indicate that the original poster is also the most recent poster.
While the OP is indeed always the first avatar in the list, the order doesn’t change in any way when there are several participants, they are simply added chronologically. Also the blue glow applies only to users for some reason, so in cases where staff replied last, there is no glow applied.
I’ve just had a flick down the topic list here on Meta and all the avatars on the right were the Most Recent Poster, unless the most recent poster was the OP and then the avatar on the left gets a halo.
Have you got a link to your forum you can share (here or in a PM) so I can have a quick look?
Oh, yes! Seems like this is how it works, thank you. For some reason I got too confused.
IMO, it’s a bit complicated to have two types of visualization for recent posters. Would be better if it was either halo or rightmost position.
I agree it would be nice to do it one consistent way, but the problem is that we end up duplicating avatars for the first poster and last poster if they’re the same person. Maybe the duplication is better as long as we’re consistent? curious to hear if others have thoughts on this.
i’m likely in the minority on this, but i am of the opinion the multiple avatars on those pages are cluttery, and thus i use the topic author theme component. i’m thinking of hacking it to make the most recent poster instead though (like the default when in small screen view). just the most recent poster (that isn’t me) would be better in the pm view too IMO.
similar to how there are different category view options, it would be nice to have some more topic list view options for (latest, new, etc). and to have some admin settings to control those pages’ avatar views, including which avatars to use (recent, most active, OP). even controlling column placement would be nice. sounds like a theme component.
