Hello, sorry to be late to the party too, but not having the “unread” count on the main page is a big loss for me (and some of my users complained too).
First thing I want to know when I get on the forum is to see if the topics I’m tracking had activity, having it mixed with the “new” count is not really logic in my point of view, they are not the same things. I really don’t care how many new topics are created, it’s lot less important than knowing if there are real “unread” topics that I actively follow (some I use to get reports or bugs from users for example).
So Is there any way to display the “unread” count on the main page, or will we have to use a plugin for that when the unified view is no more an option?
A plugin wouldn’t be necessary, a theme component would do. We still store the new topic + new reply (AKA unread) counts in the topic tracking state for the user:
This is how we are able to still show separate counts on the subtabs here:
I do agree with your priority logic, I also think that unread are more important than new. The problem has always been explaining this distinction to people who are new to Discourse who don’t understand the tracking logic as well.
Will discuss internally, but maybe there is room for some preference like this? Though it does take up a bunch of space…
Adding a user preference for this is not in our plans at this time, nor is making a separate theme component. The usage and feedback of unified new so far hasn’t justified a strong need for it.
But as I said, it should be easy enough to make a theme component (or alter an existing theme) that modifies labels in the UI to split the new/unread count again, and if you need core plugin APIs available for this I will be more than happy to add them
Ok, I still find that a bad idea to lose such information from main page
My 2 cents after thinking about it for a day or so : If it was really the wording that was confusing, you should just have renamed “Unread” as “Tracked” or something like that, I know I’m late in the discussion, but now I got that on my instance, I’ll see what I can do to get it back this important data with theme or component)
Thank you both for sharing your feedback — I understand this change hasn’t been well-received in your communities.
As Martin said, at this time, we do not have further updates planned that would address your concerns directly. In the meantime, I will move your posts to a new topic in the Contribute > Feature category so that others who may feel similarly can weigh in on the discussion so that we can keep iterating and improving upon this system in the future.
I can understand why the unread count would be more useful than the new topics count, especially when you’re following specific threads for updates or bug reports. Having to check each section manually adds an extra step. Is there currently any way to bring the unread count back to the main page without using a plugin?
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”
I believe this would mostly solve the issue for my users. It would still be extra clicks but if they could choose which one is the default that might be better
akanora recently added support for counts in Custom Top Navigation Links. I wonder if that would be a good place to allow admins to configure two separate links for ‘new topics’ and ‘new replies’. Those would show the correct counts and allow users to access the list they want directly, as they used to before the change.
