Threads marked as "read" for no adequately explained reason

[cpast]

For some reason, many threads seem to be getting marked as read when I have not, in fact, read them. Any idea why this is happening? Is there something I'm doing to accidentally mark sections read? I'm using Firefox, if it matters.

[KasperVld]

It's probably because your "session" expires, which is because you wait a long time between loading new pages. As soon as your current session on the forum ends, vBulletin will mark all threads up to that point as read, marking only ones edited after the session ends as new posts. This is useful for when you log out or actually go away for a while but if you take a long time between loading new pages on the forums for whatever reason (a good example would be writing a long post) then it can catch you off guard. There's not much we can do about this, though I'll check to see if we can extend the session time.

[cpast]

What's the default session length?

[KasperVld]

I can't tell, that's a php setting that I unfortunately cannot access, that also means I can't fix your problem

[Superfluous J]

It's about 10 minutes. I visit the "Unread posts" page about a million a few times a day, and usually on the first visit there are 10+ pages unread. If I'm quick, I can get through all of them before the final ones switch to "read" but if I get distracted or start answering a post in-depth, the later pages all go to a "read" state.

[cpast]

Workaround found (if anyone else is interested): Have a protected tab in Firefox refreshing the page every 5 minutes in the background.