# Watching/Tracking old Topics
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [October 16, 2016, 1:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606 "2016-10-16T13:15:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 1:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/1 "2016-10-16T13:15:18Z")
I recently migrated a fairly large (150k posts) phpBB forum to discourse. A lot of our users want to be able to “track” the majority of the forum, so they’ve added all categories to their “Tracked” categories in their user settings. This works perfectly for new threads created in discourse.
However, when someone replies to an old imported topic, it does not become “implicitly tracked” as I would expect from this thread:
> [@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…
Steps taken:
- User “David” has the “General” category set to “Tracked” in his user preferences
- User “Bob” replies to an old thread that was imported from phpBB
- “David” does not see this in his “Unread” tab
However, this works fine:
- User “David” has the “General” category set to “Tracked” in his user preferences
- User “Bob” creates a new thread under “General”
- “David” sees this in his “new” tab
Some investigation on the console reveals that there is no TopicUser row associated with David for either of the topics, so I don’t understand why the implicit tracking is not working.
David’s user\_id is 1, old topic\_id is 8531, new topic\_id is 10708
```
[18] pry(main)> TopicUser.where(topic_id: 8531, user_id:1).length()
=> 0
[19] pry(main)> TopicUser.where(topic_id: 10708, user_id:1).length()
=> 0
```
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/2 "2016-10-16T15:05:41Z")
This issue only seems to exist with “Tracking”.
“Watching” categories works absolutely fine - if someone posts on an old topic and I have the category set to “Watching” then I do indeed receive a notification
(Still no TopicUser row created until I view the topic, so the implicit watching is working)
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/3 "2016-10-16T17:39:06Z")
Would a prior migration or import affect this @sam?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 10:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/4 "2016-10-16T22:35:39Z")
You can’t have a topic that is both “new” and in “unread”, it is either/or.
My guess… these topics were never visited by these users, so they should show up in “new” however… you have “new” set to last 2 days or something so they end up missing.
If the users visit the topics they will become tracked.
Implicit tracking means there is no row in TopicUser, it is added first time the record is created (topic visited)
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 11:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/5 "2016-10-16T23:37:52Z")
Thanks for taking the time to look at this.
The settings on my account are the same as the defaults for all our users - consider new when “haven’t viewed them yet”. I suspect the reason that the topics aren’t all showing up in “new” is because all the users have their “first\_seen\_at” field set to the date of the import, and therefore after the topic was initially created.
So I think the problem is:
- Topic does not show up in “new” because it was created before the user first visited the forum
- Topic does not show up in “unread” because the user has never viewed it
I would imagine this logic extends further than imported forums - any new users of a forum who decide to track a category won’t see old topics in new/unread until they’ve viewed the topic at least once. Afraid I don’t know my way around the codebase enough to find the logic for what gets included in the “new” tab, so I could be completely wrong with all of this.
Would it be better change “new” from
`unviewed topics created since the user first visited`
to
`unviewed topics with posts since the user first visited`
or maybe better would be to change “unread” from
`tracked, viewed topics, with unread posts`
to
`(tracked, viewed topics, with unread posts) + (tracked, unviewed topics, with posts since user first visited, created before user first visited)`
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 11:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/6 "2016-10-16T23:57:50Z")
I can see the appeal on unconditionally adding “tracked” categories into the “new” filter but technically making this work could end up being quite costly performance wise.
Also, we have to keep a cap on new counts cause they are tracked in memory in the app, if you have 500k “new” topics it can brutally slow (and kind of pointless)
Honestly, I am really unsure what the best course of action is here.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/7 "2016-10-16T23:59:33Z")
Perhaps, one thing that is “cheap” that we could do.
If a topic in a tracked category is bumped, add it back to “new” for whatever the new duration is.
Still would feel somewhat odd.
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/8 "2016-10-17T00:01:15Z")
I feel like adding it to “new” is wrong, because the topic isn’t really new…
Unread might be a better fit, but it does make what is currently quite simple logic get a lot more complicated
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 8:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/9 "2016-10-17T08:04:53Z")
@sam is this something that might be fixed, or do I need to look into a workaround for my forum?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 8:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/10 "2016-10-17T08:11:44Z")
I am simply not sure about how to amend the logic here, if I add to unread then you can end up having 100s of thousands of unread on big forums
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 8:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/11 "2016-10-17T08:12:28Z")
Would you be able to point me to where in the codebase the new/unread logic is?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 8:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/12 "2016-10-17T08:13:27Z")
Topic tracking state and topic query but this is super sensitive code
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2016, 10:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/13 "2016-10-18T10:45:22Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> Perhaps, one thing that is “cheap” that we could do.
>
> If a topic in a tracked category is bumped, add it back to “new” for whatever the new duration is.
Now that I’ve looked at the code a bit, this would certainly be an awful lot easier!
At the moment, the “new” tab is sorted by “topic.bumped\_at”, but filtered by “topic.created\_at”. What’s the thinking behind this? It seems a little un-intuitive that topics don’t “drop off the bottom” of the list once they’re no longer declared new. What would be quite nice, at least for my forum, would be to filter them by “topic.bumped\_at”.
Would there be any way for me to adapt the new/unread logic on my forum using a plugin, without having to hack around in the code? Or is there a best-practice way for patching the core code so that I can still apply updates?
Edit: I’ve come up with this plugin which works, but doesn’t apply the “new” badge to topics. Is the logic for that badge elsewhere?
```plaintext
# name: filter-new-bumped
# about: A super simple plugin to override the new_filter to use bumped_at instead of created_at
# version: 0.0.1
# authors: David Taylor
after_initialize do
require_dependency 'topic_query'
class ::TopicQuery
def self.new_filter(list, treat_as_new_topic_start_date)
list.where("topics.bumped_at >= :created_at", created_at: treat_as_new_topic_start_date)
.where("tu.last_read_post_number IS NULL")
.where("COALESCE(tu.notification_level, :tracking) >= :tracking", tracking: TopicUser.notification_levels[:tracking])
end
end
end
```
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2016, 11:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/14 "2016-10-20T11:11:04Z")
@sam what do you think about changing the new logic to be bumped\_at rather than created\_at?
I think if things are left as-is, then some clarification should be added to the “tracked categories” box in the user preferences - should really be called “track viewed topics in categories”
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2016, 11:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/15 "2016-10-20T23:50:00Z")
> [@david](#):
>
> what do you think about changing the new logic to be bumped\_at rather than created\_at?
I don’t know, maybe add a hook there so you can easily amend it in a plugin.
The problem with a change like that is that lots of users will get very confused about how to kick stuff out of new list.
cc @codinghorror
---
### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-tracking-old-topics/51606/16 "2017-12-08T13:31:11Z")