For some reason the suggested topics list at the bottom of each comment section appears (to me) to be composed entirely of articles I’ve already read. I look, out of stubbornness, hoping each time to find something new, but I am always presented with content I’ve already seen. I wouldn’t even mind it so much if the section was titled “Previous Articles” to avoid the misnomer, but as it currently stands I find the obvious incorrectness of the wording irritating. I certainly don’t read every article on BoingBoing, so I can’t account for this strange behaviour. Is the algorithm broken? Do I simply read too much already-similar content so that it just happens to always match stuff I’ve already read?
Do these articles have little blue numbers after them?
Yep. Unread posts indicator? So it’s listing topics I’ve read but which have new comments, I guess? I’m still not sure why that qualifies as ‘Suggested Topics’. Can this be customized?
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My ‘suggested topics’ certainly seems composed entirely of ‘topics you have shown interest in before, that have been updated with new replies since last time you looked’. Not a bad feature in my opinion, but clumsily titled.
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I’m inclined to agree. The feature itself isn’t bad. It’s the title that is misleading.
If you don’t want to read the topics you are tracking:
- Visit the Unread tab
- Scroll down
- Press the Dismiss Topics or Dismiss Posts button
Basically you need to tell the system, “I do not care about these topics any more, and have no desire to read any more of them”.
The way topics get tracked is generally due to you responding to them, or reading them for more than 4 minutes. These settings are adjustable in your preferences.
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