Managing unread counts in conjunction with email

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Related discussion, though having a topic dedicated to this is probably a good idea:

@codinghorror

Can we mark things read that were read in email? Not sure this is even technically possible since most email clients block image pings and any other form of email web callbacks because spammers. Not opposed to it, I just think it is basically impossible and will lead to many complaints because the implementation will be so sketchy by definition.

@codinghorror

Just because you read it in email, doesn’t mean you’ve finished interacting with the post.

I typically “like” about 20% of the posts I read via email. Explain to me how I can accomplish that without opening the topic and actually, y’know, reading the posts?

I get the double read issue, when you read a post via email and then have to also read it via the web browser, but it seems like a fundamentally unsolvable and intractable problem. I guess it depends what fraction of posts you only read via email?