I read Questions About The Notification System and tried pushing all the buttons I can find. But apparently there’s no way to mark a read article, or notification, as unread.
AI-generated summary
The discussion revolves around the ability to mark a read post or notification as unread in Discourse. jidanni initially struggled to find this feature, but JammyDodger pointed out that it’s available through the “defer” button, which can be enabled in the user’s Preferences->Interface page. jidanni successfully used this feature, although noted its unusual requirement to be enabled first. renato suggested that admins can enable this feature by default, making it more accessible to users. mattdm also mentioned the bookmark feature, which allows users to re-notify themselves in the future. The conversation touches on the user experience, with jidanni expressing surprise at the need to opt-in for this feature, and mattdm advising to focus on personal experience rather than making general claims.
I think you may be looking for the ‘defer’ button:
However, I think you need to turn the ability on in your Preferences->Interface page:
Looks good. I was able to thus change notifications back to blue as a side effect. The only one I couldn’t change back to blue was a badge notification.
First time in software that I ever encountered an unmark as read button that needed to be enabled first!
Admins can also enable the default other enable defer setting to “Enable defer topic functionality by default”, so this user preference is already enabled and you can opt-out instead of opting-in.
That said, this feature is so useful that it would make sense to be enabled by default on a new install IMHO.
You may also be interested in bookmarks — you can make these re-notify you in the future, including (if you want) a reason why.
Out of curiosity, what social networks or discussion software (we can include chat-oriented software, but not email clients, which all have this feature) do you know that have a default setting to mark a post as unread?
I am saying “that allow a user to toggle a post’s read status.”
I am saying it seems to new users that once a post has been read in Discourse, its status is set in stone.
Because no user would have dreamed that “only hacker users would need a toggle status button, so that’s why one must opt-in deep in Preferences.”
Yes, it is hard to explain.
I think it might be more helpful if you could focus on your own experience and impressions rather than sweeping claims about worldwide end users, new users, no users, etc.