Not sure if this is by design but it seems illogical to me. If a user is watching a certain tag or category they are notified when staff create an unlisted topic in that category.* This defeats the point of having an ‘unlisted’ topic. I understand that one can access unlisted topics with a link but…

Users notified of unlisted topic creation

anon65426961 July 18, 2023, 2:09am 13

This looks to be when the feature was first added in July 2016 by Alan Tan @tgxworld:

2 Likes

Topic		Replies	Views
Newly-created "unlisted" Topics send "new topic" Notifications feature unlisting	7	1314	August 8, 2023
Unlisted topics notify users if their posts are linked bug pr-welcome , unlisting	11	1864	November 26, 2018
Fresh unlisted topics get emailed to 'watch first post' support unlisting	1	616	July 18, 2023
Discourse doesn't send notifications after an unlisted topic is listed support notifications , unlisting	3	226	October 7, 2023
Unlisted topic is visible in notification popup if a category is watched? support unlisting	10	2031	May 30, 2017