This is a little round-up of major changes that were pushed up to Commonlounge this week! We thought having one of these every week will keep you posted about what's going on, while being a good way to get your feedback and thoughts on the changes we make. At the end of the day, we just want to build something you want :)

• Reduced prominence of topics: While topics form the backbone of how we organize all the information on the platform, we saw that it was getting confusing for everyone to figure out what the primary flow of using the product should be - should one go check out the communities first, or should they check out the topics they follow and so on. So we decided to remove the Topics tab in the My Content view on top (yes, those five dots, and we’ll just call it My Communities view from now on.) We also removed topics from the sidebar on desktop to keep things consistent.
• Hidden text: We pushed this awesome editor feature:

You can access it by highlighting a piece of text and clicking that last icon:

• Renaming Post/Replies to just Replies: In our original taxonomy (fancy!), we called the first level of replies under a discussion, "posts", and the level under that "replies". Now we just call both the levels "replies" to get rid of the confusion this caused. (You are probably confused right now, just by reading about it!) We can easily rename replies to comments or responses, but felt that replies is simple and probably okay for now. If you feel the other two options are better, do let us know below!
• Simplified feed: Another place where we are trying to reduce confusion and make things less ambiguous. There were multiple types of cards in feeds (discussion cards, discussion-with-replies cards, and a reply card with a small discussion preview.) We converted all three cards into just one type of card - the discussion preview in all its glory, followed by recent replies under that discussion. This makes the feed look a lot more homogenous and only after you've gone through a few feed events (and our algorithms think you might be ready to try something new!) do you get suggestions to follow new communities, topics and users in the feed. Give it a spin and let us know what you think!
• Better logged out view: We made it easier to sign up from the topbar, as well as put a card in the homefeed as well as at the bottom of the discussion page (two of the most common pages where first time users land.) We hope this makes it easier for new people to get started here.
• Prompts to suggest a new community: The sidebar, as well as bottom of Search and Explore page, has a little prompt for you to join the discussion to request new communities. If you have one in mind, don't forget to reply here and we'll try to find someone to run the community (beware, that someone could be you!): What new communities would you like to see here?
• Other minor bug fixes and UI (and AI) improvements: This bullet goes without saying - we push a bunch of minor fixes and background improvements to our ranking systems all the time in the hope that we can make your Commonlounge experience nothing short of stellar. As always, if you have any ideas, we'd love to hear from you! Just reply below!