Hi, I’m the coordinator of the Russian GNOME translations team, we decided to move our discussions here after the terminating of the mail lists.
We have a topic dedicated to some questions around GIMP translations[1], which was originally started in the Russian subforum on International category. This topic was automatically moved to the gimp category with no link or any trace left in the original Russian subforum. This brings a few problems: 1) our discussions are quite local and targeted mostly to our Russian-speaking community of translators, moving them to more broad categories is embarrassing for people who are interested in those categorieas only and cannot read Russian 2) our subforum stays empty despite the fact that we do have discussions: those discussions are scattered around all categories and are extremely difficult to find, the engine doesn’t leave links or anything. Simply gone, nothing left.
We may have discussions around GNOME modules from DamnedLies in the future and the current scenario would be as follows: we start the topic in Russian subforum, mention some keywords in Latin characters, since, obviously, the DL modules are named in English, and then immediately the topic is removed from Russian subforum somewhere else with no traces left. I tried to start an auxiliary topic in Russian subforum leaving the link to the original moved GIMP theme but the moment I put the link, this topic dissapeared right before my eyes, it was moved again somewhere else based on the Latin keywords the engine found in it.
So my question is: can this behavior of the Discource engine be altered by admins through any means/setting they have in their disposal? We would very much like to have all our discussions to remain in our Russian subforum only, since that was the primary goal for moving here — to have our space for discussions in Russian. If this behavior cannot be altered, is it possible to make the engine leave at least the links in Russian subforum to the topics moved somewhere else?
In Discourse there are no “forums”. There are categories and tags. A topic is in one category (which you can think of as a forum) and can have multiple tags. Regardless of tags, like gimp, being added to a topic it will still be in the category in which it was posted. (Unless the person that added the tag also changed the category.)
For the linked topic the category is International > Russian and it is still found there: https://discourse.gnome.org/c/international/russian/409. Discourse doesn’t add tags; the poster, a community moderator or admin would have done that. Tags are useful on topics so that within a category people can filter on topics they’re interested in, and across categories people can find topics.
categories are used as macro areas of discussion: the International category is for discussions in languages that are not English; the Platform category is for discussions on the application development platform; etc.
tags are used to mark a specific topic, to allow for people to follow discussions across categories
For instance: if you are discussing anything related to GIMP, using the gimp tag will allow other people following that tag to receive a notification. If you are discussing something related to GIMP as an application, you can use the Application category; if you’re discussing something related to the localisation of GIMP, you should use the i18n tag alongside the “gimp” one; if you’re discussing something related to GIMP in Russian, then you should use the International/Russian category.
As @jakedane wrote, Discourse cannot move a topic to a difference category by itself: only moderators can do that. Discourse can automatically add tags depending on the topic, but it cannot remove or change tags.
Thanks a lot for the answers and for the helpful info. Choosing the specific tag I’m able now to see this topic in Russian category. I guess I’m a little slow in learning something new (: