Discourse update might be problematic

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Just a note that a discourse update caused some problems for the openwrt forum.

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I guess the starting point question is: How do you even find out what version of Discourse a site is running? (Tools / Browser Tools / Page Source works but that is a bit of a crappy answer.)

So what version are we running? (My suggestion: 3.2.0) and what version is the OpenWrt forum running?

A later version than here (e.g. 3.5.0) includes a WYSIWYG editor for the new-post window - but on a per-user basis the user can turn that off and revert to the old (i.e. current here) behaviour. And said editor definitely has some gremlins - so a user may well want to turn it off. Is that what they are complaining about?

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All good questions, but I barely know how to stumble my way around discourse and suffered the last time there was an update here. I assumed they were complaining about changes in markup when composing posts.

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If you use the WYSIWYG editor then you no longer have to do (basic) markup - because the markup (e.g. markdown) gets done for you. However there definitely are gremlins with it. Easy workaround … use the user control to turn off the WYSIWYG editor. Then it should work as it does today. Not better. Not worse.

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Answering my own question: You don’t.

I could find evidence of Discourse users requesting this feature going back 9 years. But, as seems to be a pattern, the Discourse team is very stubborn / very inflexible. Once they have decided that the current situation is the current situation, “no correspondence will be entered into”.

So the illogical workaround that I give above appears to be the only answer.

(The reason I use the word “illogical” is that, seemingly, part of the justification for not providing the version is “security through obscurity”. Script kiddies will scan the internet looking for vulnerable, unpatched versions - if a vulnerability were to emerge. But logically therefore you wouldn’t provide the version anywhere on the web, rather than providing it in a place and format that will be easier for script kiddies and harder for a legitimate user.)

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