# Set category notification state historically
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [June 14, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979 "2015-06-14T02:02:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AmiAthena](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AmiAthena)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/1 "2015-06-14T02:02:43Z")
Currently, when you change the watching/tracking status of a category, it only applies that status to topics created from that point on.
If you watch a category and then a week later realize that’s too much noise and decide to unwatch it, you are still watching each individual topic that was created during that week. Manually unwatching each one individually is unintuitive and time-consuming.
There should be an option to apply the status to the _entire_ category, not just new topics.
---
### Author:  [@kensims](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kensims)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 2:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/2 "2015-06-14T02:55:37Z")
> [@AmiAthena](#):
>
> There should be an option to apply the status to the entire category, not just new topics.
As long as it was an **option**. I would not want to turn on watching a category and have that applied unilaterally to every topic already in the category.
Here’s another thought … for something like changing watching to tracking, you might want to have the change applied only to the existing topics that are you currently watching. I.e. if you turned off watching for a topic, you probably wouldn’t want it to be set to tracking.
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 4:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/3 "2015-06-14T04:11:25Z")
AFAIK the options for this use case are
- you can Mute the Category
- after reading all the topics / post you are still interested in, you can go to the New and / or Unread pages and use the Bulk Dismiss button
Perhaps neither is ideal, but may be better than “Regular-izing” individual topics.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 4:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/4 "2015-06-14T04:19:11Z")
I think this has to be a pop up dialog that is triggered by setting the notification state for the category.
It should probably be something like
> ### Category Notifications
>
> You will begin watching any **newly created** topics in the bugs category.
>
> Do you want to watch all **3,906 existing topics** in the bugs category, too?
>
> Yes, watch all No, just new cancel
So this would also let you reset watch state on a category, e.g. set all topics in that category to “regular” when you had it set to “tracked” for a few days.
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### Author:  [@AmiAthena](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AmiAthena)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2015, 1:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/5 "2015-06-22T01:13:22Z")
I’m not sure if this is related, but it seems like something there should be an option to do or not to do:
> **[Muting category does not mute sub-categories in email](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/muting-category-does-not-mute-sub-categories-in-email/23948?u=discourse)**
>
> Muting a category with sub-categories such as "Elastic in your native tongue" does not mute emails for the sub-categories. Is this expected? Do I need to mute every sub-category?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2015, 2:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/6 "2015-06-22T02:22:35Z")
Possibly, you may want to prompt about subcategories as well.
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### Author:  [@wesochuck](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wesochuck)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/7 "2015-08-27T15:29:50Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I think this has to be a pop up dialog that is triggered by setting the notification state for the category.
>
> It should probably be something like
>
> Category Notifications
> You will begin watching any newly created topics in the bugs category.
> Do you want to watch all 3,906 existing topics in the bugs category, too?
> Yes, watch all No, just new cancel
>
> So this would also let you reset watch state on a category, e.g. set all topics in that category to “regular” when you had it set to “tracked” for a few days.
Bumping this feature request in light of the fact that I just now realized this is why some of my users weren’t getting notifications:
> [@Urgent: help troubleshoot missing notifications for watched categories](https://meta.discourse.org/t/urgent-help-troubleshoot-missing-notifications-for-watched-categories/32339/20):
>
> I guess I was the idiot that thought the answer to this question would be Yes. Even though I’ll admit that the label clearly says otherwise: You will automatically watch all new topics in these categories. You will be notified of all new posts and topics, and a count of new replies will appear for these topics. So for our low volume list, I guess our options are: Put the user account in mailing list mode (Send me an email for every new post (unless I mute the topic or category)) Not like…
I wonder if instead of burdening the user with a choice regarding Watching all previous topics, if this couldn’t be a decision for the Forum admin? I presume that one of the reasons for having it only Watch **new** posts for users is performance related on large forums.
Maybe the admin could set an option that when the Watch option was selected on a category it also sets the user to Watch any topics that are NN days old. To simplify both the coding and the admin of the feature, I would be fine if it was a global setting and not a per category setting. So the UI drop down in those cases would read:
> You will automatically watch all new topics in these categories **and any topics that are NN days old**. You will be notified of all new posts and topics, and a count of new replies will appear for these topics.
It seems to me that this could help more quickly on-board users into conversations as well. So they wouldn’t feel “left out” by not getting notifications on more recent topics that had active conversations they might want to participate in.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2016, 7:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/8 "2016-03-28T07:04:44Z")
Just a reminder @sam it is looking more and more like we need to have this dialog on REMOVING the state from the categories – as we have safety code that prevents users from watching too many topics anyway, it’s the undoing / revert that is not handled.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/9 "2016-06-17T23:03:51Z")
I believe @sam will get to this early next week 📅
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2016, 8:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/10 "2016-06-28T08:39:55Z")
This is now part done per:
> [@Canceling a Category "Watch"](https://meta.discourse.org/t/canceling-a-category-watch/12124/6):
>
> This is now implemented per: When you unwatch a category you also get a chance to unwatch all the old topics in that category when saving user prefs.
You can historically “unwatch” a category when changing.
However, historically “watching” / “tracking” opens a big can of worms. What if there are 700 thousand topics in a category, setting the read state can be crippling. It would have to have some limits.
I will add untrack tomorrow which should be fairly simple.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2016, 7:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/11 "2016-07-08T07:10:49Z")
None of this stuff should be needed anymore, be sure to read the following carefully.
> [@Watching and tracking implementation for tags and categories](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-and-tracking-implementation-for-tags-and-categories/46987):
>
> I just revised the implementation of “tracking” and “watching” of tags and categories: Watching categories and tags has always been a rather limited feature. When you started watching a category you would only watch topics in that category from that time on. (with an edge case that allowed you to also watch recategorized old topics) This limitation was … hmm … limiting. Start watching #Bug and you would not be notified on a large amount of current #Bug discussion on historic topics. T…
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2025, 11:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/12 "2025-12-04T11:36:00Z")