I’m used to using Google groups and other forums which let me mark all posts as read so that I can more easily see what’s new - I can’t see any way to do this in Discourse?
If you go to the ‘New’ page there’s a button for ‘Dismiss new’ at the top of the page. I believe that marks all new posts as read.
There’s also a ‘Dismiss’ button on the Unread page. That way you can clean out the ‘notifications’ for the topics you participated in some while ago.
If there’s a regular schedule in which you want to dismiss new topics, you can also change a setting in the notification preferences:
That way you can configure what topics show up as ‘new’ and which ones not. (And save you the trouble of ‘dismissing’ topics in the future. 
)
Also, if you want less topics showing up in the ‘Unread’ tab, you can change the ‘track’ options for that in the preferences:
Here I set tracking for all topics I read and whenever I post there. That way all those threads show up on my ‘Unread’ tab. Based on your question I think you want to be more strict here.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply.
The dismiss new just does that. It clears the little red dots that appear beside new posts. I don’t have an issue with the notifications, that’s working as I’d expect.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow you to mark the thread as read (so the topic goes grey). This is rather unusual in a forum since there are often many topics that you don’t really need to read but it is hard to know where you got up to.
It isn’t a massive deal - I guess it will just take time to find the best way to work with Discourse. I’m already in a couple of other Discourse forums and along with everything else, it is making life just slightly more difficult. But then again, one of the forums has moved over from Google Groups so it is more about change rather than anything else (the ability to just paste an image from the clipboard is divine! No more faffing having to save to disk then attach to a Google Groups post).
I will try the following though to see if that gets me closer to what I want:
Thanks again.
You mean to mark an individual thread as read?
I think that’s the pink dot to the right is for (below the ‘thread scroller’):
These descriptions are not super clear (to me at least), but here’s how I understand them:
- Watching => you’ll get a notification in the top right (under your profile picture) of what happens in this thread. Like I got one saying you replied to me.
- Tracking => the thread appears on the ‘Unread’ page to keep track of new posts, and to keep reading the thread from where you left off.
- Normal => only notified when you’re mentioned, but not shown on the ‘Unread’ or ‘New’ page.
- Muted => thread does not appear on the ‘New’ page nor on the ‘Unread’ page. And you won’t be notified when mentioned.
From what I gather, ‘Normal’ is the most like ‘mark this thread as read’.
(By the way, I agree with you that Discourse’s settings are far from obvious in this regard.)
I’m afraid not. The pink dot is the “new” marker, not the “read” marker (which is black text vs grey).
I’ve now changed settings so all new threads get a new marker (not the default) so that is better but it tweaks my OCD that I can’t mark threads read (turn the thread title grey in the list) to de-emphasise things I don’t need to read.
I accept that this cannot be achieved, it just annoys me. Not really an issue as many things annoy me 