There are six timeframe options for considering a topic “New”:
But there is only one tooltip text:
I’ve edited the site text js.filters.new.help to change the tooltip to “topics you have never viewed” – but that’s a bit misleading, as ‘never viewed’ is dependent on the user’s timeframe setting.
Latest, New, Unseen, and Unread are close concepts, and the tooltip hints are important.
Would it be feasible to build in a set of tooltip texts for New, keyed to the user’s setting?