When going away for a while, I sometimes return to an overwhelming number of posts in my watched threads; is it possible (as with most email servers) to have a 'mark all as read' button?

If we have an option "Mark all as read" and someone posts while we are away for awhile, we'll miss those posts. We can click on "Unwatch This Thread" but then again we'd still miss any new posts.

I'm watching 56 out of 93 Forums and there are always lots of bright red "NEW" listings each time I log on but I'll click on the forum and many of the "new" are threads I don't follow so I just ignore them.

I would also like to see a 'mark all as read'. If there is something I miss I can always go back through each thread. All this red 'New' is distracting the eye.

You can also just click on 'Jump to the end' on the right upper part of the page. Quick and easy to get rid of the unwanted red 'New'.

Thank you, I have tried to go one by one, forum by forum, as you suggest but it seems to be a huge waste of time as my attention span and available time are not enough to get through all the forums to 'clean house', so to speak.

Plus wouldn't we have to jump to the end of all 96 forums for your suggestion to work?
Having a 'mark all as read' would accomplish the same thing with one stroke.

Oh, I see, you are talking about all the read New on your home page? Or in a specific forum?

At the moment I only have available time to 'watch' about 9 forums on a regular basis. But when time allows I like to check what's happening on some other forums and on threads in those other forums. So to me everything has a bright red NEW; even stuff that is 24 months old is marked 'new'. Of the 96 forums, more than 88 of them have a red 'new'.

Having the option to 'mark all read' would clear away all the red which seems to be shouting and give a better picture of which forums and which threads have really 'new' stuff. It would allow me (and others) to start the day with a clean slate.

If Dave is tracking "real" interest in a forum or thread how would he then tell if the item had been read or merely checked off? cmwtk

I generally "peek" at discussion threads if they show "NEW" in the first page or so of thread titles. That clears the "RED NEW" away from my quick glance to see 'what's new" in that forum.

I ignore "red threads" below the first page unless the title is interesting.

This is why I have a little bit of a "down" on multiple sticky threads in a forum: they fill the whole first page, and there's never anything new on those threads.

I liked the structure better back when most "websites" were "bulletin boards".

You know I'm old if I remember downloading text from bulletin boards with a 300 baud acoustic modem. Ancient history!

Anything like stickies, FAQs, articles or other attached, static files would be in a separate column off to the right, separate from the live discussion threads.

People knew to look over there with the FAQs if they wanted to "research" something.

"Just the FAQs, Ma'am!"

I also often scroll down on the home page to recent threads on all forums, and have happened onto interesting conversations in forums I don't nornally watch.

Lots of different ways to navigate.

I wonder if Dave could change the color "new" to be a different color IF the thread is over a certain number of days or months old. I agree that it is distracting to see all those red "new" looking at you when you go to any of the forums. I often just look at the last date posted to know which ones are actually NEW and which ones are just older threads that I have not yet read (and probably won't read).