A (possibly stupid) alternative that’s less intrusive would be to flash the notification control after posting if the post caused a change there, just as we flash the actual post to guide the user’s eyes
Trying out this customization to reduce the noise down there and see if it helps people see more clearly what’s going on with topic level notifications (It also has some nice symmetry with the buttons under the progress bar):
When I post in a topic, set that topic to: Watching
You could backfill it on for all your users, then force them to learn about the setting and how to watch topics individually. I can see that in email heavy orgs default of watching after posting making more sense.
I have considered doing that. Could be worth trying out.
I still think the original request here has merit, but falls into a class of suggestion that isn’t exactly aligned with “complaint driven development,” since there is no strong complaint here, just an idea for an improvement to the user experience.