My Home Page Default is/was set to Latest:
I have never seen those conditions, but regardless, the answer to your three questions is no.
This is getting interesting now. 
I’m OK with Joel and/or Uckelman to look at my settings, using my password, if needed. Let me know if you need it.
I find nothing in your settings that could be causing what you’re reporting.
Does this bug report correspond to what you’re seeing?
Yes.
Does that mean it’s fixed now?
We’ve been running with the commit which fixed the bug discussed there for several weeks; apparently it doesn’t address what you’re seeing.
Having reread what you’ve said, I have some doubts that we’re interpreting the wording of that dialog correctly. It says “Stop tracking these topics so they never show up as unread for me again” [emphasis mine] whereas your complaint was that topics you’ve dismissed show up as new.
I’m not sure that new and unread are the same thing. Would you post a screenshot with some topics you’ve dismissed appearing as new?
Don’t read too much into whether I wrote “Unread” or “New”, as the entire thing is a bit confusing to me.
All I wanted to do was permanently dismiss threads that I wasn’t interested in and I wasn’t really keeping track of whether those threads were New, Unread, or whatever. I should have the option to permanently dismiss any threads anyway, I think, even ones I participated it. That’s just a normal feature of most forum software that I’ve seen.
(For example, yesterday I dismissed one that asked how to to run Vassal on Linux, a matter which is irrelevant to me, so I don’t constantly want or need to see it. I’ll see whether it shows up for me again. It’s kind of hard thing to keep track of, since I don’t know whether anyone’s responded to threads that I’ve dismissed, or whether they are still otherwise active.)
I’ll revisit this thread if the issue persists, but it might be a while.
I’m sorry this has turned into such a hassle, it’s hardly worth it. I had noticed the issue for quite some time (many months) and I finally mentioned it in the thought it would be an easy problem to fix.
I’m actually almost more curious now why no one else is seeing the “Dismiss” button.
Given the effort we’ve put into this, I’d like reach a definitive conclusion about what’s happening. Would you post the screenshot I asked for?
You mean the screen that shows the “Dismiss” button? sure, I’ll take a screenshot of it next time I see it.
But again, if you scroll uptopic and look at my last posted picture and enlarge it, you can see the “Dismiss” button in the lower right of the greyed-out area. But yeah, I’ll take a proper screenie of it next time I see it.
Yes. The one above is hard to read due to being greyed out and also some of what I’d like to see is covered by the dialog box. Try to get a screen capture of the whole window.
Here you go. I redacted some info along the top related to my browser, which is nobody’s business - all it does is show my bookmark folders and two or three websites I visit often - you know, Pornhub, etc. 
I understand now why I had no idea what you were referring to with the Dismiss button—I have never visited the Unread page, and I’m not even sure how you get the “Unread” button to show up. I see a “New” button in that spot:
I see the “New” button too sometimes, although I don’t remember whether I’ve seen both “New” and “Unread” at the same time. I’ll keep my eye out for that and let you know.
I’ll take a look at all my settings again later.
FWIW I just saw “Latest”, “New”, and “Unread”.
I’m under the impression that the issue I originally complained about no longer happens. It stopped happening about the time I first mentioned it, almost a month ago. This coincides with the purported fix discussion you linked to. So maybe it’s fixed (?).
Why don’t we try this: Type a “Test” comment into this thread, which I permanently dismissed yesterday and we’ll see whether it shows up for me again.
a test for RobS…
You need to type the comment into the thread I linked to, not this one.
Okay, thank you, Mark.
The thread in fact DID NOT show up on my “Unread” list, which tells me the bug might be fixed.
So the only remaining mystery is why I seem to be the only person seeing that magical “Dismiss” button. Weird. Or is it the “Unread” button? Or both? I don’t even remember anymore, but since my original issue seems to be fixed, I’m good to go.
I’m happy to assist the admins any other way.
Has anything been going on with the forum software the last couple of days?
My “New” and “Unread” threads no longer have the “Dismiss” button.
I did an upgrade a few days ago.
Ah, ok. I see the “Dismiss” button at the top of the page now too.
