Automatic "Mark as read" feature gone?

First, I want to thank NSN for being a great resource for nature photographers. I don't post often but I check in every day to look at the forums and have learned much from this site.

Here is something that seems to have changed with the new forums, making them somewhat inconvenient to use. On the old system I could visit a forum and then click on only the topics in that forum that interested me. The next time I visited NSN if there were no new posts to the forum then the forum would be marked as read and I wouldn't need to open it up. If there were new posts to the forum once I opened it only those topics with new posts would be marked as unread and those topics I didn't look at earlier would be marked as read. Under the new system if I don't open up a topic in a forum on my next visit the forum is is still marked unread even if there are no new posts and those topics I didn't open are still marked as unread until I use the "mark as read" link at the top of the page. This is an extra step that wasn't necessary under the old system. I tried deleting the forum cookies but that didn't help.

Am I missing something or is this the way the forums work now?

Thanks,

Greg

Greg, this is indeed the way the forums work now. And in fact the behavior of the old forums was just as likely the result of some flakey / incorrect behavior in the software, as it was a deliberately intended feature. As I understand it, the new forums have been tightened up a lot more in tracking who you are, when you are visiting the forums, and what posts are still unread for you.

The definition of "unread" topics now really means just that... they haven't been read by you. This is more like the way your email client probably works, for example, where messages stay unread until you actually read them or use a "mark read" function to clear the "unread" status...

Royce is correct and in fact this is working as designed (or intended) for the first time. The old way was "broken" as topics should not be marked read until you actually read them. You can still mark the forums (or even the entire board) as read with the push a button.

Thanks for your replies. I liked the "broken" system better but since the new system is different than I was used to I thought I would bring it to your attention.

Greg

For whatever it is worth, I also liked the "b roken" system better!

I much prefer the way it works now as I actually know what I have read and what I haven't read. I found it really annoying that I would visit a forum and then when I came back all was marked as read when I hadn't read anything. Now a quick scan and I can accurately see what I have read. It really was "broken" before. If you are not happy with how it works now you can easily click the mark forum read button but unfortunately we have no plans to break this again.

I agree with Greg, it was very frustrating for me to come to the forums and everything marked read and I new I had not read all the new posts. Now It stays yellow until i click on it!