part of the complication is that “tracking” is an independent notification level with its own meaning, so someone’s unread could also consist of “watching”
we’ve had a lot of confusion over the difference between “unread” and “new” over the years too… which is why this new structure focuses on a single concept “new” and divides “new” into “topics” and “replies”
that separation under “new” feels easier than explaining that “unread” means replies you haven’t seen yet, and “new” means topics you haven’t seen yet
for the people missing the separate “new” and “unread” — would the ability to not track new topics at all help, or do people still want to see which topics are new… and just don’t want it as prominent?
Essentially adding a “never” option to this user preference:
Alternatively, would a prioritization preference help? “new” has 3 states now:
- all - combined new topics and replies
- topics
- replies
if you could set “replies” as your default for new, would that solve the issue? or is this 100% “I understood unread/new perfectly fine and just want the old way”