Adam, after all this time I have to admit I still don’t quite get what the board is trying to tell me.
When I come back here after a few days and look at my Watching list, I see four threads with a blue badge and a number (which BTW don’t add up to the blue badge number on my avatar on the same page), but I also see several more threads before the line labeled last visit. So what is the difference between new posts since my last visit and those that get the blue badge?
I ‘think’ I have a handle on this. I had a blue 13 by my photo in the top right. As I went through entries with blue unread indicators, the number by my name decreased. So I think it is telling us that in some threads that you posted in, there are x unread messages by you.
So after going through all the unread threads (only 2 or 3 actually reduced the count by my picture), I still had a 1 in that blue dot. So I clicked on the photo and there was an item from Discourse for me to read.
While typing this my subconscious dug up this little ditty from the memory banks “You get a sure shot with Blue Dot, Sylvania Blue Dot Bulbs”.
I believe the blue dot numbers indicate how many messages are new to you in a conversation—ie, things you haven’t seen before. When I see a headline with a 2 next to it in the topic list, and I click it, I see two new messages.
The blue dot number over your avatar is related to how many posts relate more strongly to you, I think, such as posts that are in threads you’ve contributed to. That’s a little harder for me to check, since I post so much. But if you then click your avatar, you’ll see a list of those topics, highlighted in blue, and you can click each of those to go to the associated topic. Once you click your avatar once, however, its blue dot number goes away, since it’s done its job of alerting you that there are new messages waiting for you.
Thanks, Gentlemen. That makes things more clear. I guess my last question then is, what’s the difference between just a blue dot and the blue badge (with number) being displayed on some threads in the listing?
I believe a simple blue dot signifies a new topic that contains only the first message.
Got it. Thanks, Adam.