Continuing the discussion from Being able to forget discussions:
I’d also like to be able to use the New list to catch up on what I’ve missed, but at the moment I have to click on everything (even if its uninteresting) to make it disappear.
This would be, I think, distinct from muting (as I probably would want notification if I was mentioned in such a topic).
That seems to be referring to the Unread list, rather than the New list. Untracking (i.e. change my notification settings) and ‘stop considering this as a new post’ would seem to be different operations as well…
As @codinghorror noted:
This will be implemented in every topic list, be it unread or new.
I think you are all quoting the wrong @codinghorror post, I believe he is actually against this request (of course, he can speak for himself)
The one you’re quoting is about direct button sitting above a topic list that will mark all of it as read, but the current topic is actually for selecting and acting upon subset of given list of topics. He clearly noted his support for such ability.
Of course you will still be able to select all of the topics in the list and mark them one way or another, but this will require manual intervention, and not just blindingly clicking random buttons 
This view of “new” makes sense if the posts remain new regardless of my interaction with them. However, as it stands, a post is no longer considered “new” if I open it. So this leads to a slightly weird workflow whereby I have to open all of the topics I’m not interested in (normally in a new tab which I close without looking at).
I might consider the behaviour different if “new” only went away when I reached the end of a topic, though I suspect I would probably still find that frustrating.
This is a bit odd, do you expect emails to remain new even after you open them?
There is “new” meaning this topic did not exist in the world when you visited last, and then there is “new or unread posts inside the topic”.
Once you open a topic, and read it for more than 2 minutes (this triggers auto tracking) Discourse will show you unread and new post counts in the topic. If you want tracking to happen immediately on entering every topic (or never, meaning totally manual), set it thusly in your user preferences.
Nope, which is why I suspect I would find that behaviour frustrating. Let’s pretend I never said it.
I think the new list as it exists makes sense, and I can use it how I would like (i.e. to catch up on everything that I’ve missed). My workflow just has a slight hitch, which is that I still have to open (and, presumably, close within 2 minutes) topics in which I am not interested, so that they get out of the way of the topics which do interest me.
The reason that I can use the list this way is because it isn’t “everything that is new in the last $TIMEPERIOD” but “everything that is new in the last $TIMEPERIOD that I haven’t yet opened”. I’d just like a way to mark a topic (or, once we have group operations, a set of topics) as “opened”, without having to open tabs and immediately close them.
instead of this feature on the new topics page, there’s the ability to favorite. why would a topic i haven’t looked at yet be one of my favorites? it’s not as if i can even go back and favorite it after reading it, as the topic’s removed.
currently what’s the assumption, most users are going to want to read 100% of the new topics? people don’t even read 30% of a webpage.
another solution would be to sort the list by first post, as default.
to speed up closing tabs, you can use the shortcut cmd-w, on chrome. presume it’s ctrl-w on pcs.
Yeah, but to un-new a topic I still need to middle-click the topic, switch tab and hit Ctrl-W. Not ideal.
i don’t track topics automatically, so can do it in bulk. that’s only switching tabs once: with a repeated cmd-w, until all the tabs are closed.
There is now a “Dismiss Posts” and “Dismiss Topics” button on the new page.
