Whats the max number of participants that will get displayed on a topic?

Product Support

AI-generated summary

In a Support thread, hipp0 asks about the maximum number of participants displayed in topic lists, noting that anonymous users disappear when members post and that avatars sometimes wrap awkwardly. NateDhaliwal clarifies this is about featured users in topic lists, not PM headers, and points to relevant code. Moin explains that up to 5 users are shown by default — combinations of the first/last poster, frequent posters, or solution author. hipp0 shares CSS tweaks to reduce avatar spacing and prevent wrapping, but notes these affect other views. Lilly suggests targeted CSS to hide specific posters (e.g., OP or latest poster) and links to theme guides. Canapin advises caution with customizations to avoid future breakage. hipp0 confirms they only remove overlapping elements on mobile, and hipp0 reiterates the desire to display up to 8 participants to avoid wrapping, despite CSS fixes causing side effects.

1

image

The 6th participant was annoymous which disappeared when a member post. I am wondering if I can increase this number and if this is expected behavior.

2

Is this on a PM in the header or this?

If it’s the 1st, I believe the logic is here:

3

this is just in the topic list , I gave up on customizing the header participants. These replies are part of Discourse with no modification.

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image842Ă—191 14.4 KB

4

This list is about the topic’s featured users. I’m not sure if you can modify it. Perhaps you could, programmatically.

6

I am just wondering how many get displayed by default

7

I think you get up to 5 users. For example:

  • author of the first post, 3 frequent posters, author of the last post
  • author of the first and last post, 4 frequent posters
  • author of the first post, author of the solution, 2 frequent posters, author of the last post

or similar combinations. If the author of the first post is also the author of the last post there is the frame around their avatar

8 
/* Reduce spacing between avatars */
td.posters.topic-list-data a {
  margin-right: 2px !important; /* Reduce gap between avatars */
  display: inline-block;
}

/* Remove any padding inside the cell */
td.posters.topic-list-data {
  white-space: nowrap !important;
  padding-left: 4px !important;
  padding-right: 4px !important;
}

/* Ensure avatars don't have extra spacing */
td.posters.topic-list-data .avatar {
  margin: 0 !important;
}

td.posters.topic-list-data,
th.topic-list-data.posters {
  min-width: 175px !important;
  width: 175px !important;
}

This fixed the wrapping issue, where the avatars were stacking on top of each other.

9

you can modify it by css to target a single poster, latest or op, etc.. for example, you can do:

to hide OP:


@if $this_setting == "false" {
     td.posters a:first-child .avatar {
      display: none;
    }
}

for latest poster if they are the OP and not the only poster:

…
 .posters {
     a:first-child .avatar.latest:not(.single) {
…}
}
10

For what it’s worth, since you don’t seem to have a deep knowledge of CSS or programming (I apologize if you do!), I’d recommend keeping the customizations few and simple. Only do what you feel is necessary.
Each additional customization is a potential point of failure in the future.

I’ve gone down this path before, and regretted some modifications I made to my instances.

11

the only thing I am doing to the mobile view is removing things that are overlapping or taking up too much space like Group titles or flair.

12

It would be nice to switch this to max 8 participants since for some reason it wants to wrap double lined like this. I tried fixing this wrap but it affects my other areas that have thumbnail/blog view.

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image309Ă—101 10.5 KB

13

https://meta.discourse.org/tags/c/documentation/developer-guides/56/theme-guides