A possible bug has been reported in the parent category mute feature. attj describes a scenario where muting a category and then selecting it from the top left dropdown only shows 5 topics, instead of all topics. However, attj later realized that this issue only occurs when there are no replies in the topics.
Moin suggests that the problem is due to the topic status being set to “tracking” after reading all the topics. JammyDodger and JammyDodger attempt to reproduce the issue and confirm that the behavior is different for parent categories versus regular categories. When muted, parent categories only display topics that are being tracked, while regular categories display all topics. attj confirms that this description is correct.
Okay, I think I have been able to replicate similar with a test user here on Meta.
I’m getting some slightly inconsistent results due to some of the #howto:training topics, but it’s pretty much -
When muted, ‘regular’ categories will display all normal (and above) topics when navigated to directly, whereas all those categories which are Parents will only display topics that are tracking and above (with the expectation that both types of category will behave in a similar manner).