Indeed, my feature request was to prevent information fatigue.
Muting would be an option, but my users are not tech-savvy (getting them to log in to the forum in the first place was quite a journey…) and I’d have to sit with them all individually to turn on this option.
I do not seem to be able to mute categories for them, which would be the next best thing.
Adding all users to one “all users” group and then excluding the information-fatigued ones from that “all users” group means that anyone who creates a new category should NOT forget to make it private AND at least include the “all users” group to that new private category. This is a hassle and risk I had hoped to be able to skip, but I see now that may not be possible.
Thank you for helping me figure this out!