https://boards.straightdope.com/latest?state=muted
Give it a try.
This came up in this thread: General question about hidden threads (no specific complaint) - #9 by What_Exit
I asked a similar question about 2 years ago:
That link works for me
Here’s what I do. I go to the “ tracking” tab in my user account settings. I scroll to categories, select show all on the muted section it will show the threads I have previously muted.
Nice, which means the "Show"s for Watched and Tracked should and do do the same basic function but for them.
You’ll notice the URL @What_Exit posted in the OP is exactly the same page you get when you do as @chela described in post #2.
There are no secret URLs in Discourse. What there are, like most web apps, is URLs where it’s hard to discover which place in the various control panels will take you there.
Sadly many of the useful shortcuts require a username in the URL.
Here are some I use:
- https://boards.straightdope.com/posted Threads I posted in.
- https://boards.straightdope.com/u/what_exit/activity my most recent activity.
- https://boards.straightdope.com/u/what_exit/activity/topics Threads I started.
- Straight Dope Message Board Threads I have Tracking on for.
- About - Straight Dope Message Board List of Admins and Mods Though slightly out of date.
- Terms of Service - Straight Dope Message Board
- Search results for 'in:pinned order:latest' - Straight Dope Message Board Pinned threads
That’s great, thank you! Sometimes I’m reluctant to mute an annoying thread because I wasn’t sure how to get it back again, but this solves that problem.
My main reason for muting threads that I don’t care about is because I rely on the “latest” list in the right-hand pane as a primary navigation guide, and I want to avoid having it cluttered by threads that I’ll probably never visit.
@Max_S usually has useful searches and shortcuts, maybe he can add to my list.
See the raw markup for a post
https://boards.straightdope.com/raw/1005802/4
Some things you may not realize you can type in the search bar:
- group:moderators
- in:title
- in:first
- in:seen
- status:noreplies
~Max
If you use the advanced filters feature of the search page you can observe how it builds up the search string. Then on subsequent searches just keystroke those entries when you want them. If, like you and I, someone is the kind of person who remembers keyboard commands more easily than we like pecking at a UI trying to figure out which misleading non-technical terms the UI designer used used to describe what you really want. 
The advanced search page has the disadvantage of not being able to restrict the search to the topic being viewed.
~Max
Yes, that’s an annoyance.
I have been doing this for years. Anything that I won’t interact with gets muted immediately. Those that I read or post to get muted when I lose interest in them. Often I only have a handful of “active” threads above the rudely ignored @aceplace57 thread Grocery Delivery driver gets stuck in customers driveway. They invite her in for 5 days from March 2021 which I use as a marker.
You do you, but why did you choose mute versus normal for “I was following and posting but now I’ve lost interest”?
So that I just have a list of the threads that I am currently interested in. Otherwise every normal thread with a new post pops up on the top of the list. As you say, it suits me. I just thought it was the easiest way to keep track without subscriptions.
How do you mute them? Do you have to click into each thread individually and change the Normal to Muted?
I might be tempted to clear out threads I have no interest in by muting them, but clicking into each is more time consuming for me than scrolling past them.
Well, I am not going back and muting them. I do it as I go along. If I hadn’t replied to @wolfpup I probably would have muted this one once I read the content that interested me. I guess I do open some threads that I know are of no interest and mute them to get them off the list. But most of them I have a look at. There aren’t that many new ones each day.
And, on reflection, I think that is how the process started. I just began muting the odd threads that I didn’t care about and it became the way I did things.
Ah, I see. I probably open at most 10% of the threads on the list. Given there are so many unopened threads, muting the ones I do open isn’t worth the time.
I do mute long-term ongoing threads of im not interested. Scrolling past something once isn’t worth the time to mute. Scrolling past it daily for a year definitely is.
What is “the list” to which you refer? I have zero use for muting anything because of the way I operate between the new and unread lists.
In my case, Latest Posts. But it’s whatever list you use to look at threads - New Posts, threads by forum, threads by tag, etc.
Aha. IMO Latest posts is the most useless thing. Since, as you’ve noticed, it throws up all sorts of stuff you’re not interested in. And forces you to take active measures to push the junk out of the way.
My habit FWIW, is to start on New posts; that’s where my one and only SDMB browser favorite goes. From teh New list I open all the ones that look interesting in new tabs, then click [Dismiss New] to hide the rest from the New list.
Then I’ll go read those new posts in their separate tabs. Which, in the course of reading, will automatically switch them from Normal to Tracking. Which moves them into my Unread list whenever there’s new posts to that thread. Likewise, that means I get a notification if I’m quoted or @-ed. So I can tell the difference between a thread with fresh posts where somebody is talking to/about me, versus where the fresh stuff is just talking to the thread / OP in general. If, in the course of reading the new thread, I decide I actually don’t care about it, the last thing I do before closing its tab is set it to [normal]. Which means it won’t appear in New again, nor will it appear in Unread.
Once I’ve read through all those threads, it’s time to open the Unread list. Which shows me every thread I’ve already decided I’m interested in that has anything new to read since the last time I was caught up to the end of that thread. Then I’ll work my way through that list, replying or not as I want.
If along the way I realize I’ve lost interest in some thread I’ve been reading / contributing to, I don’t set it to [mute]. I set it to [normal]. That way it disappears from my Unread list, but I still get a notification if I’m quoted or @-ed. If that happens I can decide whether to bother seeing what they wrote, or if I care enough about whatever was said to reply or not, etc.
Then a few hours later I return to the Dope, do the same thing with first New then Unread, and I know that I’m seeing all the fresh stuff and all the stuff I know I was interested in a couple hours ago, and none of the stuff I’ve already decided I don’t care about. To me this seems the lowest-effort least friction-filled way to play this game.
YMMV of course, but this works for me.