Account for Tracked & not just Watched topics (Something between 'muted' and 'tracked' for categories)

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In a feature discussion titled ‘Account for Tracked & not just Watched topics (Something between ‘muted’ and ‘tracked’ for categories)’, users propose enhancing notification behavior for muted categories. purldator suggests that muted categories should still notify users if they are @mentioned in a topic they haven’t visited yet — especially to preserve relevance while fine-tuning the suggested topics list. They reference a related thread and note that current behavior may not account for tracked topics, only watched ones. cpradio echoes this, emphasizing that mentions should continue to trigger notifications even in muted categories. codinghorror clarifies that muting a category currently only affects newly created topics — existing topics retain their notification state. Thus, users who mute a category after topics are created may still receive notifications for those older topics, which could be confusing or unintended. The core issue revolves around aligning mute behavior with user expectations around tracking, mentions, and topic relevance — particularly for users trying to curate their feed without losing critical notifications.

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(In relation to my recent situation in trying to fine-tune the suggested topics list.)

I wanted to suggest the idea of accounting for tracked topics and not just watched topics when it comes to muting entire categories (and ergo, their topics within).

This thread also seems to be partly-related. If I decide to mute categories for the sake of fine-tuning my ux, I would still like to be notified if I am @mentioned in a topic I haven’t visited yet in a category I muted.

In my case, I’m not muting categories because I don’t want to hear about their existence ever again, but simply to lower the ‘feedback’ of incoming topics in my ‘latest’ topic listing tab, as well as for suggested topics at the bottom of each topic.

Was wondering if this is viable as a suggestion to be taken into account or not.

2

@codinghorror, I was thinking mentions continued to notify you in muted categories/topics.

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No, the issue is probably that switching a category to muted only affects newly created topics in that category. That is, topics created after you changed the setting.

If you switch a category to muted today, there might be thousands of existing topics that will still have their old notification state set. And since you have not muted those old topics you’ll continue to get notifications for them.