I reviewed the PR but unfortunately it introduces another AJAX call for the “standard case” which is not acceptable.
I also question not selecting anything, if someone clicks “New Topic” on “Feature” and then it goes to the “first item” in the category list, well it will cause “different” confusion.
- Why is it selecting “bug” when I do “new topic” in feature?
I think the correct way to go about this @Drew_Warwick is simply to allow creation of topics on “feature” and add a topic template there that warns them to select a proper feature subcategory.
Gday,
One way to solve this might be to not show topics under the category, just subcategories. Then members would be more likely to go to the subcategories. I want that for a different reason as discussed here. 
Hmmm interesting. Maybe a theme component like this would help. But you lose out on being able to browse all of the parent category in one spot which may be a problem for some people.
Looking at:
I think this is quite a great solution for your problem here @Drew_Warwick , it very much simplifies stuff for end users.
Could we reuse this work here?