The curious thing about "New Posts" Vs. Alerts

[acgs]

I don't know if this is just my own misjudging the "New Posts" feature's function or if there is something off about it, but I have found posts dropping off this list. The alerts I receive on watched threads seems to be working as I expect it should, but sometimes the posts I've been alerted to aren't showing up in their chronological place on the New Posts list.

Shouldn't the list show a sort of changelog for the forum? Shouldn't every post get listed in descending order by time stamp?

I also thought that maybe my reading of posts might mark them as "not new" for me and be dropping them off my own view of the list, so I tried pulling up the list when I was logged off and the results were the same: some posts were missing.

I'm also wondering if this might be a way some new threads are overlooked by users. Or am I the only one who's really using the new posts list often?

 

[Plasma]

Posts will disappear from "new posts" once you read them, so maybe that's what's happening. However if you click on "new posts", then "what's new", you should see all the latest posts including those you have read.

Edit: I just noticed there is a "show only: unread" filter applied to new posts by default. If you remove that you can achieve the same thing.

 

[seaken]

I always click to remove the filter for messages read after clicking on new posts and that seems to work to get me a good chronological list of topics with nothing missing.

Seaken

 

[acgs]

Edit: I just noticed there is a "show only: unread" filter applied to new posts by default. If you remove that you can achieve the same thing.

I always click to remove the filter for messages read after clicking on new posts and that seems to work to get me a good chronological list of topics with nothing missing.

Thanks for both of your replies, they helped me pin down part of the problem. First, I was aware of the unread filter, but I was sure I'd set the default to off. Somehow it was still set to on. So, knowing I'd set it off, I assumed "Show only: unread" was a button to turn it back on! Therefore, I never touched it until both of your posts made me look at it again more closely. I would have expected the filter to display "showing only: unread" if it wasn't a button to turn it on. But, when has that ever been the universal case?

With the unread filter off, I still see that this list doesn't really give a chronological order of posts, only of newest posts to threads. For example: Looking back over the last four pages of the list (which goes back to before this thread was started) I can only find one entry for this thread and it's seaken's post. (Of course, this should change once I make this post.)

 

[Plasma]

New Posts -> Latest Activity may be what you want

 

[acgs]

New Posts -> Latest Activity may be what you want

I've been using Latest Activity for the last few days and this does do what I was expecting from the New Posts feature. Thanks for pointing it out.

I hadn't noticed the postings being different between the two lists. I only noticed that Latest Activity had more details about each post when compared to New Posts. What I'd really prefer is a chronological listing of the all posts like in Latest Activity, but with a compact display like in New Posts.

Oh well, using both lists gets me close enough.