Dismiss them in the unread view?
1 Like
I’m at a disadvantage here. I don’t want to create a second account, but I also don’t want to mark everything as read. To me marking everything as read is an act of desperation. You lose valuable information. It’s something you would do only if you came back after being stranded on a tropical island being hunted by polar bears and had only one way to catch up. Maybe just stay inside the unread tab ?
That’s what I said 
1 Like
Maybe I’m crazy, but is anyone else seeing this? I’m trying out using the “unread” view and maybe it doesn’t mean what I think it means…
This is what my latest view shows - clearly one with bold which means unread (I think)
This is what unread shows - it’s blank?
1 Like
Well. Horses for courses. We simply have different habits, or as Pierre Bourdieu would have opined, rituals.
Regarding the specific issue of “dismiss” on Discourse, I don’t see any benefit in preserving unread status in “Latest” if the end user marked all as read under “New”.
It should no longer be shown anywhere as >>“unread”<< (i.e. not gray)
Is that clearer?
TT
You are not crazy. You illustrate the issue well.
Unread based on your personal notification preferences.
If you have “watching” set on all categories, then you will get notified about every new topic and every new post in that topic.
You can still browse the entire site — through Latest, through going to a category, through browsing a tag — and your read and unread status is tracked.
I wrote about it here:
And here’s another screenshot from Account > Preferences > Categories.
So the Discussion and Meta categories first posts will show in unread for me. Follow up topics will not…unless I choose to watch a topic.
GG is muted. I need to read the category manually and posts won’t show in Latest or anywhere else.
Developers, How To etc will show in Latest for me, and I can choose to read them or not.
Finally — I have the default set globally for the site so that new users are “watching” the Discussions category — which is essentially most like a single topic mailing list.
Did you see Stobot’s post? It appears that unread posts are being omitted from the unread tab. I just did a peek around and quickly found one unread post in Latest which doesn’t appear in unread. What does “unread” mean if not “unread” (bold) ? Is there some way to make it behave in the expected manner?
Please read my response directly above yours, which is a reply to stobot, which explains to the best of my knowledge, how Unread works, and how it is based on each person’s notification settings. Everything you want to read, will show up in Unread.
The default global setting is “watching first post” (admin only User Preferences setting):
So, from stobot’s screenshot, if he hasn’t changed default settings, the Discussion category is default set to “watching first post”. He “read” the first post, and now won’t see follow up replies unless “tracking” or “watching” the entire thread.
It shows up in Latest, because a follow up reply shows is the third most “latest” post on the site.
If you want to read every single post in a category, set your personal category preferences to Tracking or Watching.
Ah, so the extra bold in “latest” may be a topic I spent less than 4 minutes in and therefore didn’t get added to tracking. I’ve now switched that preference to “immediately” and see if that keeps those in sync. Good catch, thanks @boris !
1 Like
I’m trying to sort this out. The terminology of “notifications” is confusing. It’s like its speaking a different language. I would have expected “notifications” to relate to what shows up in my email box or in the pop-up box, not what shows as read or unread. But I digress.
What is the difference between “Watching” and “Watching first Post” ?
If you’re “tracking”, are you automatically “Watching” ? The difference is a bit confusing.
I think you’re saying that if I want to have everything that is actually unread show up under unread, that I have to set “Watching first Post” or “Tracking” But I notice that neither of these offer “Discussion”. So a user like @TiddlyTweeter who wants to see everything under unread that hasn’t been dismissed will need to go through and manually select nearly a dozen categories? Not the end of the world, but is something to be mindful of if new categories are added.
Thanks!
1 Like
I don’t know what you mean by Discussion.
Guessing: “Watching” will show every single reply, if by Discussion you meant replies to first posts.
Watching is the highest level of notification, then Tracking, then Watch first post, then Normal, then Muted.
As per the screenshot I posted, if you visit Account > Preferences > Categories — it takes about 30 seconds to set categories in each notification setting.
Notification settings are available when browsing to a category and can be directly toggled there as well.
As new categories get added, I would expect them to be announced in the main #discussion, and people can track them as desired.
The mental model is roughly: we’re running 6 mailing lists, and you can customize your settings for each one. By default, new users will see first posts in Discussion, and the default home page is Latest, which is everything on the site.
It’s right there in your post and screenshot. For watching first post on your screenshot you can select “Discussion”. The following dropdowns don’t have that option – you have to select all the current categories.
Here’s what I see on my preference panel.
See? “Discussion” is available under “Watched”. But under Tracked and Watching First Post I have to make a selection.
Sure it doesn’t take long, but it’s a bit of a cognitive disconnect. Why can I select “Discussions” at the top but not anywhere else?
Also, I already had the top “Watching” set by default, yet unread mail was not appearing under “unread”. Now I’m trying things with everything set under “Tracking.”
I’m just trying to see if there’s anyway to make things work the way @TiddlyTweeter prefers, or if it’s hopeless.
Discussion is the name of our default #discussion category. The screenshot shows that you have #Discussion in the watched category.
What you are selecting is the categories you would like in each notification setting. Clicking on “Select” will show you a dropdown of all of the categories that you haven’t already set a notification level for:
If you start typing, it will filter.
If you want to remove it from one notification level, click on it and hit the X to remove it, and you can add it to another notification level:
If you would like to have every single post on the site to be something that shows up in unread, put all categories in the Watched level.
It shows me ONLY the discussion category:
It shows me no other option and filtering does nothing except eliminate the one option.
I just did some more experiments, and if I select all the categories and put them all in Tracked (for example), then yes, you need to first remove them from that notification level with the “X”, before being able to select them in another notification level.
1 Like
Ok, that’s looking promising.
This might not be a problem for @TiddlyTweeter , since TT wants to mark almost everything as unread, but when I go to the Unread tab, it always shows the results in chronological order. Is there a way to automatically show them in reverse chronological order?
Thanks!
Click on the table headers – Replies / Views / Activity – to sort. Activity is “date of latest activity”.
I think I now concur on this point a bit. I just discovered that talk thinks I’m an unfriendly person because I hadn’t awarded any 
. I’ve awarded lots of other emoticons, and assumed it was counting them all the same. Nope. Has to be .
I’m old school. For me, is for special people on valentines day, not discussions in a public forum. But I guess it’s more like grade school where everyone had to get a valentine for everyone on valentine’s day 
Right. But I have to do it every time I click on unread. I thought there might be a way to set the default sort, or, that it would remember my choice from now on.
Ok, I’ve done this. I’ve put everything into “Watched”. When I look at latest, this post:
Do you think of links as having ‘direction’?
shows as unread. I haven’t visited it. I don’t think so anyways. But when I go to unread and reverse sort, I can’t find it.