Hello everyone, thank you so much for volunteering to help test out the Discourse before we launch on February 15th! Before we get too far along, please do the following:
Afterwards, please look around, create and reply to topics, and post any feedback or questions here!
I just wanted to let yāall know that the first table of content link in the Community Guidelines is broken (āCommunicating with a Communityā on https://discourse.32bit.cafe/faq)
I notice that on mobile, the personās profile pic shown on the left side of the screen is the most recent poster. This works fine on desktop where IIRC it shows the username of the OP, but on mobile I opened the app up and it looked like yequari made every intro post 
Do we have a way to change that? Do we WANT to?
Yeah, thatās confusing. We should see the OP profile picture for topics.
Alright. I jumped on desktop and compared to mobile view and see what ya mean. It still is confusing between the two viewsā¦
it is a little confusing for sure, at least something to get used to. it does make sense when you have āmore informationā (like the latest post label of the table column), but is there a way we can make latest post/last post more obvious maybe?
thank you for letting us know! iāve fixed it so it should now be working.
after the testing period is over, will forum posts be visible or everyone, or just logged-in users?
I think the plan is for everything other than interest clubs to be visible to outside users and search engine indexable!
i have a question surrounding etiquette with the Reply function; maybe iām overthinking itā¦
letās say i want to reply to a posterās reply to the main thread, but i also want to reply to the original thread post. in this instance, should iā¦
A. make one post, replying to the topic, and mention the other userās reply and include my comment in both posts.
B. make one post, replying to the posterās reply, and include my response to the main thread
C. make two posts, replying once to the topic, and once to the other posterās reply
i think A or B is most polite so as to not flood the thread, as with a linear forum, but C is technically more correct in terms of maintaining hierarchy.
thanks all!
testing replying to a replyā¦
EDIT: okay, it lookās like replying to a posterās reply that is itself replying to a posterās reply gives you the option to see the next post in the chain of replies but not the whole chain/thread. iām not sure if this will influence anyoneās replying etiquette, but i wanted to test it out. 
I think B is preferable in most cases
when i start a new topic (or edit an existing one), i can only choose from a short list of existing tags. i think adding āsolvedā and āunsolvedā to the list will make navigating Help easier.
yes we have very few tags to start out with (most of them are exclusive to the interest clubs). For the help forum I am planning to install this Solved plugin, if it makes sense to add solved/unsolved tags in addition to it then I will.
oh sweet! i didnāt know about plugins; checking out the page now and it looks ideal.
Hey @testers I made a quick change this morning that I would like feedback on.
The categories view will now show the latest topics in each category. The downside of this is we canāt group them together into Web & Technology and Interest Clubs and such. Do you think this is an improvement of the category view?
Iāve also found that as Iāve been using Discourse more, I use the Topics view a lot more than I originally expected. By default, the landing page is usually Topics, but we changed it to be Categories to hopefully prevent people from being overwhelmed by how much there is on the site. Do you think this was a valid concern? Do you browse the forum more from the Categories view or the Topics view?
As always thank you for taking the time to test with us 
Iāve found myself going to the topics view most often because it shows the last updated topics in a list, making it easy to find new posts or replies. The categories view adds an extra layer of deciding where to look, clicking it and seeing theres no new/updated posts, going back, checking another section, etc. If you are mainly interested in just a few categories this probably works well, but at the moment Iām curious about Everything being posted ^^; Though once the forum becomes more populated/active the categories view may be preferable 
Anyways, from what I see in the categories view it seems like they still are organized into those three groups, just that the group name isnāt visible (unless thatās just a coincidence). (edit: i think i misunderstood grouping concern)
second edit: I just realized that with the updated categories I can see a few updates in each section so thats really nice! I think that was a good change as opposed to the card view where it was rather blind going into each section.
i think the new category view is an improvement. being able to see the latest topics gives new users a better idea of what kinds of conversations are happening where, so the lack the category group names isnāt a huge loss.
iāve been using the topics view because thereās less than a dozen of us here, so itās easy to keep up with every post. like Solaria mentioned in the message above, iāll probably switch to primarily using category view on february 15 when the volume of posts goes up. i agree that the categories page (especially with todayās improved layout) is a more approachable, less overwhelming landing page.
i like the new categories page. before, it was neat and easy to read, but information was lacking. despite the labels being gone, i think the grouping is still sensible, especially for users familiar with the discord layout.
i have definitely been using the topics view. i think because thereās only a few of us, and the activity is pretty quiet for now. i suspect i will go back to browsing category once posts are more frequent; and i will certainly give it a try now with the new categories layout.
itās difficult to test from the perspective of a user totally new to the community, so coming at it from that perspective, i think landing on the categories page is a good way to go. it evokes a similar design pattern to what one would expect coming from a traditional forum like phpBB or SMF, with the board listing.