If I’m sitting on discourse (or any forum for that matter) and keeping on top of things, I like to have my “home” screen to be a list of recently updated threads. It gives a good overview of what’s hot right now and lets me jump straight in.
However, if I’m coming to a forum with fresh eyes, I’ll scan the categories and drill down to the one I’m interested in, and see what’s hot in that category. I’ll also behave this way if I’m coming back to a familiar forum after a break. I don’t have time to catch up on everything, so I’ll just check a few critical categories.
What will the most common use of this forum be, and therefore which behaviour should be the default?
It will be very different when there is more traffic.
Categories for me.
Anything im following ill get alerts.
Other than that i like to just browse through a forum.
I think if it’s going to be public facing, the categories view is more self-explanatory, but I do prefer the recently updated approach to get a good idea of what is going on where.
I understand what you are saying but think the home should be categories because power users can figure out how to bookmark a direct link to the new posts page, but new users can’t and will find it confusing.
Right now, it’s still th ecategories list with 5 Latest topic per top-level category. They’re still working on this though, so a)it’s subject to change and b) it’ll be a little while before we make the switch here.
