TRIAGE TEST — verifying the comment endpoint accepts a scripted post. If this is the only line here, ignore it.

Confirmed - cause found, patch not written yet.

The category really is optional on BOTH sides: the server explicitly permits an empty one and the dropdown has no required attribute. Both halves need fixing; the browser-side check alone is not a fix.

Moving it out of OPEN so the list reflects reality: this one is pinned down to exact files and lines, so what is left is writing and testing the change, not working out what is wrong.

Fixed on the website in b4ededb, and deployed.

Cause: the category was optional on both sides. The server explicitly permitted an empty one, and the dropdown carried no 'required' flag - so most reports arrived uncategorised and the board's category filter was close to useless.

Fix, in order of what actually matters:
- The server is the real gate: an empty category is now its own rejection with a plain-English message, and a value that is not a real category still says 'Unknown category'. A client-side 'required' alone would have fixed nothing, since a direct POST bypasses it.
- The form marks the field required, and its label badge switches from the grey 'optional' pill to the pink 'required' pill already used by the title and description fields. No layout change.

Retest on the report form: try submitting with the category left on its blank entry.

Correction to my comment above. When I wrote 'and deployed', it was not - the fix was committed but had not actually reached the server. I checked the live form straight afterwards and the required flag was still missing: the earlier deploy this session only pushed the CDN config, not the portal pages.

report.php is uploaded now and verified against the live page: the category dropdown carries `required` and the label shows the pink 'required' pill. The server-side rejection - the part that actually matters, since a direct POST skips the browser check entirely - is in the same file and went up with it.

Flagging it rather than quietly correcting it, since I had already told you it was done.