RickCorey said: The red Yes is really sufficient to get me to check the forum and find the new threads.

Yes Rick, that has always worked well for me. This is the first time it had not shown up with the red yes.
I always click on the links for my Thread watcher to go directly to a thread to respond, so not sure why the red yes was not present in my Watch Forum list.

When I see the red Yes on a Watched forum, I expect the thread with that new, unread post to be at the top of the list of threads (after Stickies) but often it isn't.

I'm confused, since I thought that threads were sorted within a forum based on the timestamp of their most recent post.

However, being confused is not unusual for me. I think it's my default state.

Other than stickies, all threads in a forum are sorted by their latest reply.

That's what I thought, and that is what I usually see.

However, sometimes I will see the "red Yes" in my Watched forum list.
Then I go into the forum and see "black dashes" above The "red Yes" in the far-left column.

If there was a new post since I was last in the forum, shouldn't that time stamp be more recent than any thread with two black dashes?

I assume that I'm confused rather than the feature acting erratically, now that I'm using FireFox almost exclusively.

Yes, although I suppose it's possible that the post was made but deleted by a moderator before you got there.

Unlikely, but possible.

Hmm!

I'm trying to be more consistent about my browsing habits to see if I can find a pattern.

Maybe I used a "back-arrow" in a browser while reading a thread, instead of exiting normally.
I seldom paid attention to the distinction between visiting a forum and reading every thread.

I just know that relatively often I see "black dashes" above "red Yeses" in a forum's list of threads, and that seems as if it should be extremely infrequent.

Is there any chance that some parts of ATP could be sorting on "poster's local time" and other parts sorting on UT? I doubt it, but that's one thing that might let "old" East Coast posts sort "above" newer West Coast posts.

(I blamed IE 7 for months, but now I'm using FireFox. I still think the likeliest answer is "User Confusion".)

Here's one dumb possibility I just found:

I always used to click on the "new thread" row of the Thread Watcher. Of course if that was the ONLY new post, when I finish reading the new post and go to the forum, the tor row far-left column has black dashes!

I may have confused that obvious case with the idea that forums often have black dashes in the top-left corner "when I go into them".

I'll watch for that DUHH.

Yup.

As long as I am careful to "visit the forum" before reading the new thread, the first thread is always at the top of the forum's list of threads.

"DUHH" confirmed.

I'm glad you figured that one out.