If anyone has ideas for finessing the sidebar please do share. It is the new default in Discourse forums. 
My thoughts…
The new sidebar actually works quite nicely. Looked back through discussions on meta.discourse.org and there is the ability to add custom items to the sidebar.
Adding a custom Help Users section to list new posts with no replies
Related to Support category with several hundred topics without response topic from 2018
And You can help forum posts with no replies
How does the new sidebar help?
- First you’ll want to enable as admin
enable custom sidebar sections - Create a custom section for the sidebar
- Add a title such as:
New Questions - Paste in the link to show recent posts with no replies
https://help.nextcloud.com/latest?max_posts=1&order=activity&status=open