# PSA: Big improvement to my Discourse Experience: Watching First Post

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-big-improvement-to-my-discourse-experience-watching-first-post/18253>\
**Category:** Meta Discussion\
**Created:** [December 3, 2018, 3:01pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-big-improvement-to-my-discourse-experience-watching-first-post/18253 "2018-12-03T15:01:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ssfrr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ssfrr/32/3736_2.png) [@ssfrr](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ssfrr)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:01pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-big-improvement-to-my-discourse-experience-watching-first-post/18253/1 "2018-12-03T15:01:10Z")

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I use Discourse mostly as a mailing list - I read through using my email client. Previously I had enabled “mailing list mode” but that generated a huge quantity of emails, mostly for topics I wasn’t interested in. I could unsubscribe from individual topics, but that takes multiple clicks and when scanning through 30 threads is kinda a pain.

My new strategy is to use the “Watching First Post” feature on pretty much all the categories, so I get an email with the first post of any new topic. Then I can subscribe to the ones I’m interested in. Basically making it opt-in instead of opt-out.

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/2/b/2bc8876cffdfcdd9ece70cc09bd4e895bdcdd499.png)

I also set it so that when I reply to a topic, it automatically sets it to “Watching”. If I replied that’s a pretty good signal that I’m interested in that topic.

![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/6/2/62dd1963258829b785443e745b045c519384ee29.png)

This has cut down dramatically on how long it takes me to keep track of the things I’m interested in on Discourse.

edit: ack - accidentally posted before I had typed anything.

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**Author:** ![yakir12](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/yakir12/32/297_2.png) [@yakir12](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/yakir12)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-big-improvement-to-my-discourse-experience-watching-first-post/18253/2 "2018-12-03T15:27:18Z")

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Nice, thanks for the tip!