Completely unread topics with recent replies should show as new

Continuing the discussion from Watching and tracking implementation for tags and categories:

There’s one piece of logic I don’t think we cover yet:

  • “this is a topic” was created in 2015
  • I join the forum in 2016. I track no categories, but I’m always on the lookout for :new: topics, i.e. topics that are completely new to me.
  • “this is a topic” receives replies.
  • the only way for me to spot this topic is to notice it as unopened in Latest.

In my opinion, the logic should be:

If a topic is completely unread and receives new replies, it should show up as :new: for me, so long as it also matches my Consider topics new when preference.

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@sam’s previous response to this request was

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Yes, I believe the solution I’m after is exactly this:

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I actually implemented this in a plugin, but I think the concern was that making that change in core could potentially cause a lot of confusion for existing users, especially those that have “consider topics as new when I haven’t viewed them yet” as their setting.

You mean, not expecting a topic to be :new: when it is actually many years old?

Yeah it can be a mild shock, but I don’t see how missing the topic altogether is a better trade off. There are additional UI hints we could throw in if we get a lot of reactions to this.

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I agree 100%, better to fix the functionality for the long term even if it causes a little confusion to start with :slight_smile: .

I would like to hear @sam’s opinion on this, I think the risk is too high personally.

I really don’t know, this is very complicated and full of compromise dragons.

There is one edge case that kind of makes sense to handle though.

  • IF you have “Consider topics new when I haven’t viewed them yet”

  • AND an old topic you never saw gets a reply

  • AND the topic was created PRIOR to the time you created an account

  • THEN consider topic new

This is rather edge casey, but makes complete sense.

I am less easy about the default of “Consider topics new when created in the last 2 days”

We are very explicit about the copy there, so we would basically be lying and people who simply “ignore” to get rid of new stuff will get really really annoyed.

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Would still love to see an improvement here. I completely missed this topic because I never originally tracked it.

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