From a practical perspective, that doesnāt make sense to me. If I buy a book and put it on my shelf having not opened it, it is both new and unread.
Wouldnāt it be possible to have an old topic (with no tracking record) only appear in unread when thereās new activity on it?
So, just as a tracking record is created on new activity for topics in watched categories, a tracking record would be created on new activity for topics in tracked categories.
Combined with the above, couldnāt we just dismiss topics where the tracking record has been changed to ātrackingā as a result of tracking the category, which would mean the same user experience, without any additional database writes? (If I understand how tracking records, dismissing and TopicUser relate.)
This way, it seems to me, we could have a mailing list experience for tracking too!