finding high-traffic unanswered threads on Discourse forums

TL;DR

On most Discourse forums, unanswered-but-popular threads hide in plain sight: sort the latest list by views, filter for zero replies, and skim the top of the stack. That takes under five minutes per forum and surfaces the threads where a good answer gets the most eyeballs. Discourse exposes all of this through its public JSON endpoints, no login needed for public categories.

finding high-traffic unanswered threads on Discourse forums

Use this when

• You are scouting a Discourse forum for threads worth answering
• You want views-per-thread data before spending time on a reply
• You are comparing several forums to pick where to invest effort

Not for this skill when

• The forum is phpBB, NodeBB, XenForo, or a custom build (different APIs)
• You already know which thread to answer and just need reply help
• The forum gates topic lists behind login

Steps

1. Find the forum's latest feed. Append .json to the latest URL, e.g. https://example.com/latest.json. Expected: a JSON payload with a topic_list.topics array.
2. Pull a decent page size. Request https://example.com/latest.json?page=0&per_page=50. Expected: 50 topics with views, posts_count, like_count, and last_posted_at per topic.
3. Filter for unanswered threads. Keep topics where posts_count is 0 or 1 (the original post plus zero replies). Expected: a shorter list, usually 5 to 15 candidates per page.
4. Rank by views. Sort the filtered list on views descending. Expected: the most-watched unanswered threads at the top.
5. Sanity-check the top candidates. Open the top 3 to 5 and read the actual question. Expected: you find 1 to 3 threads where you can genuinely help.
6. Repeat across pages. Bump page=1, page=2 until view counts drop below your threshold. Expected: a working shortlist of target threads.

Variant phrasings

find popular unanswered questions on a Discourse site

Same flow: latest.json, filter postscount, sort by views. Use perpage=50 and walk a few pages.

Discourse zero-reply threads with lots of views

Watch out: some sites count the original post as one post, so filter for posts_count of 1 or less.

how to discover threads to answer on Discourse

If the forum has a visible "Unanswered" filter in the nav, use that first, then sort that list by views.

Why it happens

Discourse's default topic lists sort by recent activity, which buries old unanswered threads under every new reply. The raw JSON gives you the view counts the UI hides, so you can find questions lots of people care about but nobody answered.

Edge cases

• Some forums disable .json for anonymous users; log in and retry, or fall back to the visible UI sort.
• Stickied topics inflate view counts; skip anything pinned.
• Very old threads (a year plus) with no replies are often abandoned questions; check last_posted_at before replying.
• Categories with restricted visibility return 403; stick to public categories.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_6cRRZSdphDHM5VelHD-ivA