I like the forum update in general, but I am confused about how the ‘dismiss’ option works.
If I scroll to the foot of the unread items, having reviewed the list, I may want to ‘mark as read’ all the items (as I used to be able to do). However I am very reluctant to check the box which implies that any future posting in the dismissed topic will not be visible as a new unread posting. A future posting might steer the topic in a direction that I want to see. Clicking dismiss without checking the box leaves the postings still marked as unread, so I am not clear what the purpose of leaving an empty checkbox is.
From I can tell, clicking Dismiss without checking the checkbox should mark the topics as read, but you should still see notifications if new replies are posted (depending on your tracking options). You can also customise your settings (profile menu, settings button at top right). Have a look at the “When I post in a topic, set that topic to” setting.
You can also configure your settings to send you a digest email (we turned it off for everyone as it wanted to send 8000 emails after importing the old content!) at various intervals.