I think it’s more reasonable to call these topics “unread” because according to my settings I should read them and I haven’t. Calling them “new” gives me the feeling that I don’t need to read them, they are simply new topics.
I saw a discussion from two years ago 
.
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Hello,
We’ve had literal hours of conversation about the naming internally. Eventually, we concluded that new and unread were too ambiguous: everything unread is also new for a user, everything new is unread by default.
Is this the setting you refer to:
Or has your question been already answered by the other topic you found?
Exactly, so why call it “new” not “unread”? That’s my only question.
I see. Because “new” is a standard denomination across the internet, “unread” not so much. So users will easier understand the former.
But as always, easy to configurate on your own forum if you want to change it 
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This is incorrect. New does not just mean “new for a user”, it also implies recent.
The consequence is that an item would disappear from a “new” list when it is no longer “new”, no action required from the user (which is not how it works in Discourse).
For an item to disappear from an “unread” list, the user must perform an action.
New defines object-state while unread defines user-state.
If “new” is different for each and every user, it should be called “unread”.
The best “proof” of my point of view that the “new” list should actually be called “unread”, is that when I mark a topic as unread (shift-U), it will re-appear in the “new” list.
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And that I suppose depends on your settings.
If you choose this:
Then new does only mean new for me, regardless of recency.
So the trouble with the naming is tied to double meaning of the setting.
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I didn’t even realize that this setting existed. (The fact that it does exist might be an extra indication of this being too complicated ).
But… I have this set to “created in the last 2 days” and my /new looks like this, and “mark as unread” lets a topic re-appear.
(not trying to be difficult, seriously not understanding how this works then)
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Perfect statement for the lol-sob emoji.
No worries; we’re a bit infamous on the topic of complex settings
Is the topic you marked as unread less than 2 days old? (The easy explanation 
)
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I don’t understand this.
I have the setting to “created in the last 2 days”
The list contains older topics → weird thing #1
Reading a topic makes it disappear, even when it is less than 2 days old → weird thing #2
Marking the topic as unread makes it appear in the list, regardless of how old it is → weird thing #3
In other words, my /new is 100% behaving like “unread”.
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That’s not really true. Recency is still part of it. My preference has been configured like that for almost a year, and the oldest topic I see in /new was created 22 days ago.
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New does indeed function like unread, that’s normal behaviour. It wouldn’t make sense to keep things in “new” after you have read them, regardless of setting. What would be the point?
So to confirm: you are using the new structure so you’re seeing this:
Right? I assume yes because you joined the group afaik.
The below is what I think I know:
If you’re on the “all” subtab, the list can indeed contain older topics because that’s the previous “unread” list; aka topics with new replies. So if someone replies to a 10d old topic you were tracking, it will appear in that list.
That’s because it’s no longer new (you have read it). In this case, yes, new = unread.
This is back to the first point: it goes back to the list (at least the the “all” tab) because it is unread.
And you’re certain you haven’t simply opened or dismissed them?
What does that “consider topics new when” setting do then?
Would we have had this entire conversation when the tab was simply called “unread” ?
I found my old definition when trying to get my head round it.
It’s not self evident that “unread topics” are different to new topics. Really it means watched/tracked topics that you have read but which have unread replies. Is there a succinct way of explaining all this?
From: The "new new" has been enabled on Meta - #23 by Jonathan5
(I wasn’t able to use the quote function, maybe because the topic is so old.)
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Yes. I don’t use dismiss, and I am very sure I still haven’t opened all topics. /unseen is still full of those topics I haven’t read, but the topics simply disappear from /new after a few weeks. The time span differs. A while back, when I tried to find out why and asked ask.discourse, the oldest topic was only 14 days. (ask wasn’t helpful at all, but very good at lying)
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I don’t get it: that places topics you haven’t interacted with in a separate list so you know what is new?
Don’t you find unread to be weird? No other forum/social media-like platform I know does that. New is universally understandable.
And if we were to use “unread” then the rest of that setting doesn’t work anymore…
We can’t say “consider topics unread when they are newer than 2 days”. So, older are automatically unread? Would be confusing too.
But again, very easy to change via the site texts if you prefer of course.
The plot thickens… 
It’s not self evident that “unread topics” are different to new topics. Really it means watched/tracked topics that you have read but which have unread replies. Is there a succinct way of explaining all this?
I think of Unread as “Updates”. Not perfect, but seems closer. I may relabel it on my site.
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I’m lost. Let’s get back to the start of this.
My setting says this
So I would assume my “new” list only contains topics that were created in the last two days?
My /new list says this though:
(and so on, and so on)
As you can see there are 615 “new” topics. The four at the top are the ones I started, some of them with their last activity over two years ago. Then it just shows topics, in order of most recent activity.
When I change that preference setting the number just gets higher.
My questions:
- what logic does determine what is in that list?
- what does that setting do instead (since it does not seem to do what it says it does)
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On Meta my /new page shows 13 topics – I think ones that were created in the last 2 days but never read. When I look at one of them the number goes down and that one isn’t shown.
My /unread page shows 32 topics. I recognise them all as ones I’ve fully/partially read in the past. They all have a blue badge showing the number of unread posts.
The /latest now has 44 pages so must be a combination of the two above, though there aren’t any blue number badges.
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