Editor’s Choice Comes to Discover

Public means a room may be found. It does not mean PingRoom should recommend it.

Until now, Discover kept PingRoom's first-party rooms in the default directory. Public rooms created by other people stayed outside that feed unless someone searched for a specific room.

The August 26 source changes add Editor’s Choice, a separate Discover shelf for community rooms selected through PingRoom's operator tools.

This is a source-level development update across the server, operator panel, and mobile app. It is not a public-app release announcement.

A Shelf Is A Decision

Editor’s Choice is not the default public-room query with a new heading. A room appears only after an operator explicitly selects it.

The room must still be active, public, and listed. Official rooms are excluded because they already have their own first-party position. Agent inboxes, direct-message rooms, and deleted rooms are excluded because none of them belongs in a public recommendation shelf.

The operator action checks those rules again while the room row is locked. If the room became private or otherwise ineligible between opening the panel and pressing the button, the addition stops instead of publishing stale state. An existing selection can always be removed, even if the room later becomes ineligible.

One Room, One Shelf

When enabled and non-empty, Editor’s Choice sits at the top of Discover. The existing Popular and New shelves continue below it.

A selected room is removed from those lower shelf calculations, so one recommendation does not occupy two places on the same screen. Joining still uses the normal room-preview and membership flow; editorial selection changes where the room is introduced, not how membership works.

The Server Decides Whether It Appears

The mobile app does not guess whether the shelf is available while its product configuration is still loading. It waits for the resolved server policy, fetches the curated set when enabled, and clears the local shelf when disabled.

The server value also acts as an emergency kill switch. PingRoom can hide the entire shelf without publishing a new mobile build, while individual room choices remain under operator control.

If the curated request fails, Popular, New, category browsing, handle lookup, and invite-code lookup still work.

Pagination Keeps The Full Selection

The public directory supports pagination, so Editor’s Choice cannot assume the first page is the whole list.

The mobile service walks every curated page in batches of up to 100 and combines the results. The server sorts by subscriber count and then by room ID, which gives tied rooms a stable order across page boundaries. A test with 105 tied selections checks that no room is duplicated or skipped.

Official And Community Stay Distinct

The default directory still fails closed around PingRoom's official account. If that first-party owner cannot be resolved, the server returns an empty default feed rather than accidentally exposing every public community room.

Editor’s Choice uses its own query and approval field. Official rooms come from PingRoom; Editor’s Choice rooms come from the community and were selected for the shelf.

Selected Community Rooms

Public Discovery and the Official Room established a first-party starting point for Discover. Editor’s Choice adds selected community rooms without turning every public room into an automatic recommendation.

Public is a visibility setting. Editor’s Choice is a decision.