Topics show as read after browser window open only minutes?

[Colin Jason]

I did try searching for an answer to this before I posted, but since the search feature is pretty damn picky about wording, I had no luck. I also checked the FAQ's regarding this, and found nothing.

I seem to remember someone posting about this before, but I'm not sure, so I'll ask again so I have a clear answer.

Whenever I visit the forums, and say I spend 10-15 minutes reading a thread, when I pop back out into the main forum listing, all the topics that HAD been showing up as unread, or with new posts, are now shown as read. I know there's a feature in vBulletin to set when topics should automatically be marked as read, but we don't have access to set that in our profiles...so has this just been set board-wide?

I find it annoying, because I now have to guess which topics in that forum were updated.

It does this on 4 different computers, even after deleting all cookies, clearing the browser caches (in IE, Firefox, and Opera), and logging in and logging out...it still does the same thing.

So, just for clarification, has this option been hard-set in the board configuration options by administration, and if so, why? Thanks.

 

[Spark]

Cookies are set so that if you aren't active for 15 minutes, next time you are active, it only shows new topics, because effectively your cookie expired.

 

[Colin Jason]

I'm guessing this cookie setting is done server side to keep loads/disk space down? If so, that's cool, I was just wondering because it's been bugging me for a while.