I hope support is the right category for this.
I upgraded my site from 1.2 to 1.3 about a month ago and the thread list used to gray-highlight users' unread threads. Now that has been taken away, everyone has been trying to figure out the "new" rules for finding "new" threads because "new" in Discourse language only means "recently added" and "unread" has a remarkable set of conditions users need to synthesize to understand what the software is trying to tell them. My users are to the point where there are calls to roll back because people are missing entire, vital, discussions and I'm in no position to tell them to RTFM. I took a poll and universally they do not feel the Unread filter is reliable or accurate (even though it explains right there in the three bullet points that what they actually want that filter to do is not anything at all like what the filter does) and they viscerally say the highlighting design was perfect and far preferable.
How are others handling this with their sites? I can't believe I'm the only one to feel this backlash.
For me personally, it's a non-issue I didn't really notice because I'm on the site all the time, so I just naturally track and stay on top of what I am into. But the noise has not subsided a month later after trying to educate them. I decided to see for myself what this looks like for a user who doesn't log in regularly and logged in with a test account that hasn't been used in a few months. Wow is all I can say - the lack of coherent visual feedback is immediately apparent. Who would have thought such a simple visual cue would be so important.
Is there some way I can get the background highlighting back? I read a thread that there was some caching concerns between multiple devices which is why this feature was removed but I never saw that in .2 and I used my phone and PC all day long on the site without issue, but i recognize I am a sample size of 1. Nobody ever complained about it, at least not in my communities.
It is unclear to me what the path is ahead short of rolling back and waiting for a fix/plugin/new direction for Discourse.
I am a huge, huge fan of this project and particularly the co-founders, so I am prepared to go the distance to make it all work - can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks a bunch!!
Killian