I wonder if we just got it wrong to begin with assuming that the notification settings per-category would map cleanly to the notification settings per topic at all.
Consider, for example the “watching first post” setting.
My hypothesis is that a lot of the category-level settings are really there because it’s for users who don’t visit the site often, but do want to hear about some particular subsection of the forum.
In which case, I’d be willing to bet we could just eliminate the existing Tracking and Watching options for categories, whilst adding the “mailing list” mode per category. (regardless of what the name is).
So you’d end up still with 4 settings instead of the current 5:
- mailing list mode / “email me every post but don’t notify me”
- email me about the first post
- normal
- do not show this category in New or Latest
In addition, or perhaps as an alternative, I could see a preference (default on?) that says:
clear notifications that I’ve already been emailed about
This avoids the email tracking complexity while setting clear expectations.