Often when opening a new thread (new to me, that is – one I’m visiting for the first time) I’m taken to what seems to be a random post. Just now, a new-to-me thread opened at post 33 of 39.
What’s up? Anyone else getting this? Do I have a preference set wrong? Is there a secret code? Am I being watched? Does anyone really know what time it is?
I might be missing what you are asking, but are you clicking on the blue arrow or on the thread title itself?
If you click on the thread title you will go to the beginning of the thread. If you click on the blue arrow my experience has been that it will take you to the first post after the the time of your last visit to the board, whether or not you have read that particular thread. You might want to compare the time for the post you are taken to against the time displayed as being "you last visited at: "
Thread title. I never use the “last post” link. Still, I’ll compare the post times with my last visit the next time it happens and see if there’s a conxn.
Just for clarity, there are two arrows; one to the left of the thread title known as “First New Post” and one to the right of the time stamp, known as “View Last Post”. The “First New Post” arrow will take you to the first “unread” post in the thread; unfortunately, this is a little bit buggy, it seems. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it completely disregards that you have indeed read the thread and just takes you the first post, and sometimes it behaves as mentioned above. The board appears, in general, to mark all posts as “read” when you leave; any new posts after that time are marked as new.
This is happening for threads I’m opening for the first time, clicking on the title (with alt tag “Go to first unread post in thread”). Just now, the Supermodel/Seal thread opened at post 8 of 17.
PastAllReason seems to be correct re the times. Post 8 was the first post later than the time displayed in my “You last visited” field. Thanks, PAR! You da… whatever you are.
Dopers – this just me? No one else?
Admins – ideas?
Perhaps I should just stop whining and suffer the horrible inconvenience of having to navigate to post 1. 
There are two links: “Go to first unread…” and the thread title. The former is a blue arrow, pointing down. This will take you to the first unread post, as determined by the system. Hovering over the thread title itself should not give you the alt tag of “Go to first unread…” it should give you either a popup preview, in IE, or the URL of the thread, and should take you the first post regardless of whether you’ve viewed the thread or not.
This is true when you’re navigating from the forum homepage or the subscriptions page, but not when you’re navigating from the SDMB homepage and selecting the most recent thread in a forum. In that view, hovering over the title of the thread gives you the “Go to first unread post in thread” alt tag. I should have mentioned where I was navigating from.
That’s still pretty much the same thing though. If you click on a title from there, it will take you to the first new post since your last visit, same as clicking on the blue arrow in the forum listings.
Hey, you’re welcome from a poster of the female persuasion. Not sure what da … that makes me. Sorry I couldn’t provide a complete answer though.
But that’s not what the alt tag says. It says “Go to first unread”. Should the alt tag be changed? Does navigating this way take everyone to the first new post since last visit?
My understanding is yes. From my observations, it seems like when you log out or time out, all uread posts get marked as read. Whether or not you’ve actually read those posts is irrelevant. It’s annoying at times, but it’s the way things are. There are other boards that work differently, this just isn’t one of them. Why, I don’t know.