Bit of a late one on this topic, but we rebuilt after unified new view went stable and a member flagged that topics he’s tracking stopped appearing at the bottom of topic pages. He’d been using that list to hop from whatever he’d just caught up on to the next thing.
@martin you dug into new_and_unread_results up in #20 for the All-tab ordering, this is the other caller of it, list_suggested_for. Before, that path did:
unread_results(…, :high) # first, takes as many of the slots as it can fill
new_results(…) # only whatever's left over
random_suggested(…)
and now it’s a single new_and_unread_results(…) at normal priority. Both paths run through suggested_ordering, so same-category-first applies either way, the difference is that unread tracked topics used to get every slot they could fill before a single new topic was considered, and now they’re in one pool with them. Net effect: an unread topic you’re tracking in another category now ranks below a brand-new topic in whatever category you happen to be reading.
Quiet site, you’d never see it. Ours is busy with people following long-running threads across several categories, so the 5 default suggested_topics slots fill with new topics and the tracked stuff falls off the end.
Can’t tell whether that was deliberate. The announcement doesn’t mention suggested topics. Happy to dig up more if it’s useful.
&tldr: Suggested topics at the bottom of a topic unread lost its priority