I just learned that it’s possible to mute entire categories in Discourse to keep topics posted in them from showing up as new, notifying you, and the like. In the top right corner on the category index, there’s a dropdown beside the New Topic button that you can use to control the defaults for topics posted there.
I found this useful because there have been a number of topics posted in Everything Else lately that ultimately wind up being very contentious or negative. People should feel free to share their opinions, but I’d rather not see the topics that attract the negative ones unless I go looking. Muting this category keeps those topics from being overtly brought to my attention while still leaving me the option to selectively peruse this category if I want.
Please don’t turn this into a value laden conversation about the types of things that anyone else wants to post, I just want to share this tip with others.
I’m not too bothered by forum status. If I get the Regular tag, great. If not, that’s also fine. I suspect I’ll be fine either way if trust level 3 is mostly the default. It requires 25% of posts/topics to be read, capped at 20k. Should be easy to cover more than that even excluding this category.
Besides, if I keep reading the topics that bother me I’m more likely to leave the forum entirely or disengage. Definitely the lesser of two evils muting one category!
